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Updated: June 8, 2025
Joseph looked at her with severe suspicion, but she found refuge in benevolence. "Honey, you ought to be asleep dis werry minit; look lak folks been a-worr'in' you. I's gwine to pick out de werry bes' calas I's got for you."
At length, in the spring of 1766 four years after Calas had been broken to death on the wheel four years after Voltaire had undertaken to have the unjust decision of the Toulouse magistrates and parliament reversed, the court of judges, after going completely over the evidence, pronounced the judgment to have been entirely unfounded! The decree was accordingly reversed.
But, with his usual inconsequence, he takes no pains to conceal the fact that the populations of Abbeville and its neighbourhood were unanimously exasperated against La Barre and D'Etalonde, and the people of Toulouse against Calas, and all of them would have been condemned by juries summoned from those districts as surely as they were by the magisterial Busiris.
There is nothing I have not done to enlighten myself as to the truth. I dare to say that I am as sure of the innocence of this family as I am of my own existence." For three years, with a constancy which he often managed to conceal beneath an appearance of levity, Voltaire prosecuted the work of clearing the Calas.
It was about the middle of winter when they set out, and Sirven's wife died of cold on the way, amidst the snows of the Jura. On his arrival at Geneva, Sirven stated his case to Voltaire, who took it up as he had done that of Calas. He exerted himself as before. Advocates of the highest rank offered to conduct Sirven's case; for public opinion had already made considerable progress.
We may feel against him a just and honest indignation when we remember that he dared to travestie into a foul satire the tale of his country's purest and noblest heroine; but we must recollect, at the same time, that he did a public service to the morality of his own country, and of all Europe, by his indignation quite as just and honest as any which we may feel at the legal murder of Calas.
A plaster or two made everything even in a short time, except in the driver's case for the driver died. The woman whom Bras-Coupé had thrown over his head lived to sell calas to Joseph Frowenfeld. Don José, young and austere, knew nothing about agriculture and cared as much about human nature.
Voltaire played it at Ferney, and Queen Marie Antoinette had it played in her presence at Versailles. It was not until 1789 that the piece was played in the theatres of Paris, when it had a considerable success. We do not find that any Protestants were sent to be galley-slaves after 1762, the year that Calas was executed.
In the streets, men meeting each other would ask, "Have you heard of Calas?" The dead man had already become a hero and a martyr! An important point was next reached. It was decided that the case of Calas should be remitted to a special court of judges appointed to consider the whole matter. Voltaire himself proceeded to get up the case.
His enemies elsewhere continue to persecute him, and he is pestered with anonymous letters." Some of these were of a humour that disclosed the master hand. Voltaire had been universally suspected of stirring up the feeling of Geneva against its too famous citizen, though for a man of less energy the affair of the Calas, which he was now in the thick of, might have sufficed.
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