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It was only when Jean Calas was shortly after executed at Toulouse that an extraordinary sensation was produced and that not because Calas was a Protestant, but because his punishment came under the notice of Voltaire, who exposed the inhuman cruelty to France, Europe, and the world at large.
Another of the sons, however, a man of ill-regulated life, dissolute, and involved in pecuniary difficulties, committed suicide by hanging himself in an outhouse. On this, the brotherhood of White Penitents stirred up a great fury against the Protestant family in the minds of the populace. The monks alleged that Jean Calas had murdered his son because he wished to become a Catholic.
For years he filled Europe with the echoes of the groans of Jean Calas. He succeeded. The horrible judgment was annulled the poor victim declared innocent and thousands of dollars raised to support the mother and family. This was the work of Voltaire. Sirven, a Protestant, lived in Languedoc with his wife and three daughters.
'For even as Jean Calas was guilty of being a Protestant so is Alfred Dreyfus guilty of being a Jew, and at the present hour unhappily there are millions of French people who can no more believe in a Jew's innocence than their forerunners could believe a Protestant to be guiltless.
But though Voltaire hated Protestantism like every other religion, he also hated injustice. It was because of this that he took up the case of the Calas family, so soon as he had become satisfied of their innocence. But what a difficulty he had to encounter in endeavouring to upset the decision of the judges, and the condemnation of Calas by the parliament of Toulouse.
Frowenfeld entered after him, calas in hand, and with a grave "Good-morning, sir." " m'sieu'," responded the landlord, with a low bow. Frowenfeld waited in silence. The landlord hesitated, looked around him, seemed about to speak, smiled, and said, in his soft, solemn voice, feeling his way word by word through the unfamiliar language: "Ah lag to teg you apar'." "See me alone?"
Rousseau, however, whose biographer has no such stories to tell as those of Calas and La Barre, Sirven and Lally, but only tales of a maiden wrongfully accused of theft, and a friend left senseless on the pavement of a strange town, and a benefactress abandoned to the cruelty of her fate, still was moved in the midst of his erotic visions in the forest of Montmorency to speak a jealous word in vindication of the divine government of our world.
Being soon convinced that the Parliament deserved all his indignation, Voltaire did not grudge time, efforts, or influence in order to be of service to the unfortunate remnant of the Calas family.
Joseph deposited his calas with these things and made haste to produce a chair, which his visitor, as usual, declined. "Idd you' bregfuz, m'sieu'." "I can do that afterward," said Frowenfeld; but the landlord insisted and turned away from him to look up at the books on the wall, precisely as that other of the same name had done a few weeks before.
'I may add that he is risking far more than his great predecessor risked in favour of Calas. Voltaire pleaded from his retirement on the Swiss frontier; Zola pleads the cause he has adopted on the very spot, on the very scene of all the agitation. Anonymous assassins threaten him with death in letters and postcards.
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