THE “TREATISE ON TOLERANCE”
One of the disadvantages of biography as compared with fiction is, that
in real life many events occur simultaneously, and the dramatic effect
of a crisis is often spoilt by that crisis being extended over a long
period of time and being interrupted by trivialities.
The Calas case, at whose “dragging” Voltaire had cried out at the end of
nine months, lasted for three years--a period which is certainly a
severe test of enthusiasm. Voltaire’s triumphantly survived that test.
At the end of those three years he was only more eager, passionate, and
laborious than he had been at the beginning.
But in the meantime there were Ferney, Tourney, and Délices to manage;
Madame Denis always needing amusement and Marie Corneille always needing
instruction; that busy, hot-headed rival, Rousseau, to be taken into
account, to say nothing of friends and enemies, visitors and plays.
On March 25, 1762--just about the time when the first rumours of the
Calas story reached Voltaire--“Olympie” took what may be called its
trial trip at Ferney. Two or three hundred people sobbed all through it
in the most satisfactory manner, and all felt cheerful enough to enjoy a
ball and a supper afterwards.
In April, these enthusiastic amateurs were once more delighted by a
visit from the great actor Lekain. He had been at Délices in 1755; but
there was a beautiful new little theatre at Ferney now, where “Olympie”
was played again. Lekain looked on as a critic; and Voltaire did the
same, being debarred from his dear acting by a cold in the head.
“Tancred” was played too, and when there came that line:
Oh cursed judges! in whose feeble hands--
the whole house got upon its feet and howled itself hoarse. It would not
have been like Voltaire to hide from his friends, even if he could have
done so, a subject that so possessed him as the subject of Calas. “It is
the only reparation,” he said, writing of the scene, “that has yet been
made to the memory of the most unhappy of fathers.”
Charming the audience with her soft voice and round girlish freshness,
Marie Corneille was now always one of the actresses. She had by this
time a pretty _dot_ as well as a pretty face; and Papa Voltaire, in
addition to the proceeds of the Corneille Commentary, had settled a
little estate upon her. A suitor naturally appeared soon upon the
_tapis_. But though he was warmly recommended by the d’Argentals, M.
Vaugrenant de Cormont seems to have been chiefly remarkable for large
debts, a very mean father, and the delusion that he was conferring a
very great honour on Mademoiselle by marrying her. He had taken up his
abode at Ferney, and when he had received his _congé_ was not to be
dislodged without difficulty. Mademoiselle was serenely indifferent to
him; so no harm was done.
Marrying and giving in marriage was to the fore in the Voltaire _ménage_
just then. In May, Madame de Fontaine became the wife of that Marquis de
Florian who had stayed with her at Ferney and long been her lover.
Voltaire was delighted--not in the least on the score of morality--but
because he thought the pair would suit each other, which they did.
On June 11, 1762, “Émile, or Education,” Jean Jacques’s new novel, was
publicly burnt in Paris. Nine days after, it was condemned to the same
fate in Geneva. “Émile” expresses in nervous and inspired language some
of those theories which Voltaire’s friend, Dr. Tronchin, had worked so
hard to bring into practice. It was not so much the education of
children that “Émile” dealt with as the education of parents. To abolish
the fatal system of foster-motherhood, instituted that the real mothers
might have more time for their lovers, their toilettes, and their
pleasures, to portray a child brought up in natural and virtuous
surroundings--even an eighteenth-century censor could not have found
matter meet for burning in this. But “Émile” was only a scapegoat. “The
Social Contract,” published a little earlier, was what the authorities
really attacked.
Neither the publication of “Émile,” nor its burning, particularly
attracted Voltaire’s notice at first. Like Lasalle, he was all Calas. On
July 21st, he wrote indifferently to Cideville that Rousseau had been
banished from Berne and is now at Neufchâtel, “thinking he is always
right, and regarding other people with pity.” For the “Profession of
Faith of a Savoyard Vicar” which was “imbedded in ‘Émile,’” Voltaire
indeed not only felt, but expressed, a very sincere admiration. But your
“Eloïsa” and your “Émile,” and your hysterics generally, why, they bore
me, my dear Jean Jacques! And you are so dreadfully long-winded, you
know! However, the “Savoyard Vicar” had shown that Rousseau had the
courage of his unbelief. It was the kind of heroism in which Voltaire
was not going to be behindhand. In July, 1762, appeared his “Sermon of
Fifty,” whose excellent brevity was a reproach and a corrective to the
four immense volumes of “Émile,” and whose virulent attack upon the
Jewish faith was at least as outspoken and unmistakable as the Vicar’s
“Profession.”
This fifty-page pamphlet is noticeable as the first of Voltaire’s works
which is openly anti-Christian. Goethe declared that for it, in his
youthful fanaticism, he would have strangled the author if he could have
got hold of him.
Rousseau, of course, took “The Sermon of Fifty” amiss, as he was fast
coming to take amiss everything Voltaire did. Jean Jacques was quite
persuaded, for instance, that it was Voltaire who had incited the
Council of Geneva to burn “Émile”; and, presently, that it was
Voltaire’s hand which guided the pen of Robert Tronchin’s “Letters from
the Country,” which favoured the burning of “Émile,” and to which
Rousseau was to make reply in the brilliant and splendid inspiration of
his famous “Letters from the Mountain.”
The truth seems to have been that Voltaire laughed at Jean-Jacques
instead of losing his temper with him; or, rather, that he lost his
temper with him for an occasional five minutes, and then laughed and
forgave him. Végobre, the lawyer, who is described as having “no
imagination” to invent such stories, was once breakfasting at Ferney
when some letters came detailing the persecution inflicted on Rousseau
for his “Vicar.” “Let him come here!” cried Voltaire. “Let him come
here! I would receive him like my own son.”
The Prince de Ligne also records how, after Voltaire had vehemently
declared that Jean Jacques was a monster and a scoundrel for whom no law
ever invented was sufficiently severe, he added, “Where is he, poor
wretch? Hunted out of Neufchâtel, I dare say. Let him come here! Bring
him here: he is welcome to everything _I_ have.”
All the sentiments were genuine, no doubt. It would have been perfectly
in Voltaire’s character to abuse Rousseau by every epithet in a
peculiarly rich vituperative vocabulary, and to have received him with
all generous hospitality and thoughtful kindness as a guest in his house
for months; to have quarrelled with him and abused him again, and once
more to have received him as a brother.
After all, Voltaire was not a perfect hater.
That sodden, worthless Theriot came to Délices for a three months’ visit
in July, with all _his_ treachery and ingratitude amply forgotten; and
in October that very showy hero, Richelieu, who was always in money debt
to Voltaire, descended upon his creditor with a suite of no fewer than
forty persons. They had to be accommodated at Tourney, and _fêtes_ and
theatricals devised for their master’s benefit. The Duchesse d’Enville
and the Duke of Villars were also staying with Voltaire, who was quite
delighted to discover that a Richelieu of sixty-six still kept up his
character for gallantry, and to surprise him at the feet of a charming
Madame Ménage, a Tronchin patient. The pretty face and wit of Madame
Cramer also quite vanquished the susceptible elderly heart of the
conqueror. Voltaire offered to get rid--temporarily--of her husband. But
Richelieu had reckoned, not without his host indeed, but without his
hostess. Sprightly Madame Cramer laughed in his face.
The first authorised publication of a work which had been suggested at
Richelieu’s supper-table thirty-two years earlier belongs, by some
_bizarrerie_ of destiny, to this 1762, which also saw the noblest work
of Voltaire’s life--the defence of Calas and the preaching of the Gospel
of Tolerance.
Whoso has followed its author’s history has also followed the
“Pucelle’s.”
Alternately delight and torment, danger and refuge; now being read in
the Cirey bathroom to the ecstatic bliss of Madame de Graffigny, now
passed from hand to hand and from salon to salon in Paris, now being
copied in Prussia, and then burnt in Geneva, hidden in Collini’s
breeches at Frankfort, and stolen from Émilie’s effects by Mademoiselle
du Thil--the adventures of the “Pucelle” would form a volume.
Considered intrinsically, it is at once Voltaire’s shame and fame. It is
to be feared that there are still many people who are only interested in
him as the author of the “Pucelle”; while there are others to whom the
fact that he wrote it blots out his noble work for humanity, and the
bold part he played in the advancement of that civilisation which they,
and all men, enjoy to-day.
That Voltaire took in vain the name of that purest of heroines, Joan of
Arc, is at least partially forgivable. He did not know, and could not
have known, the facts of her life as everybody knows them to-day. His
offences against decency may be judged in that well-worn couplet:
Immodest words admit of no defence,
And want of decency is want of sense.
Only one excuse need even be offered. Voltaire wrote to the taste of his
age. As the coarse horseplay and boisterous mirth of the novels of
Fielding perfectly portrayed humour as understood by eighteenth-century
England, so the gay indelicacies of the “Pucelle” represent humour as
understood by eighteenth-century France.
The fact that women, and even women who were at least nominally
respectable, were not ashamed to listen to and laugh at those airy,
shameful _doubles ententes_, proves that the thing was to the taste of
the time; as the fact that “Tom Jones” and “Joseph Andrews” were read
aloud to select circles of admiring English ladies proves that Fielding
likewise had not mistaken the taste of his public.
The “Pucelle” is infinitely bright, rollicking, and amusing. Voltaire’s
indecency was never that of a diseased mind like Swift. He flung not a
little philosophy into his licence, and through sparkling banter
whispered his message to his age. Those ten thousand lines of burlesque
terminated, it has been said, the domination of legends over the human
mind. Condorcet goes so far as to declare that readers need only see in
the author of the “Pucelle” the enemy of hypocrisy and superstition.
But the fact seems to be that though Voltaire was constantly hitting
out, as he always was hitting, at hypocrisy and superstition, the blows
this time were only incidental; and that he wrote first to amuse
himself, and then to amuse his world.
That he succeeded in both cases, condemns both it and him.
If Voltaire’s connection with Madame du Châtelet was a blot on his moral
character, the “Pucelle” was a darker blot. It spread wider to do harm.
His passionate and tireless work for the liberation of men’s souls and
bodies, for light and for right, make such blots infinitely to be
regretted. That the best work in the world is not done by morally the
best men is a hard truth, but it is a truth.
Of the “Pucelle” it can only be said,
But yet the pity of it, Iago!--O Iago, the pity of it!
On February 12th of 1763 the man who had not only written the most
scandalous of epics, but had tended Marie Corneille with as honest a
respect and affection as if she had been his own innocent daughter,
married her to M. Dupuits, cornet of dragoons, handsome, delightful,
three-and-twenty, and head over ears in love with Mademoiselle. M.
Dupuits united to his other charms the fact that his estates joined
Ferney, and that he was quite sufficiently well off. One little trouble
there had been. Père Corneille disapproved not only of this marriage,
but of any marriage, for his daughter. Voltaire sent him a handsome
present of money to assuage his wounded feelings, but did not invite him
to the ceremony lest young Dupuits should have cause to be ashamed of
his father-in-law, and that graceless Duke of Villars, who was also at
Ferney, should laugh at him. The ceremony took place at midnight on
February 12th, and the wedding dinner was at least magnificent enough to
give Mama Denis as Marie called her, an indigestion. There were no
partings. The young couple took up their abode at Ferney, where their
love-making gave the keenest delight to a large element of romance still
left in Voltaire’s old heart, and where presently their children were
born.
It was not wonderful that the good fortunes of Marie Corneille should
have incited many other offshoots of that family to “come pecking
about,” as Voltaire said, to see if there was anything for them. Only a
month after she was married, Claude Étienne Corneille, who was in the
direct line of descent from the great Corneille, and not in the
indirect, like lucky Marie, appeared at Ferney. But Voltaire, though he
thought Claude an honest man and was sorry for him, could not adopt the
whole clan. His mood was still adoptive, however.
In this very year he took to live with him Mademoiselle Dupuits, Marie’s
sister-in-law; and a certain Father Adam. Mademoiselle Dupuits was not
less pretty than Marie, and very much more intelligent. Several of the
noble Ferney visitors amused themselves by falling in love with her.
On March 2d, Voltaire had written, “We are free of the Jesuits, but I do
not know that it is such a great good.”
The suppression of the Order of Ignatius (it was not confirmed by royal
edict until 1764) first occurred to him as a splendid tilt at
_l’infâme_--as the happiest omen for the future that those who had been
so intolerant should themselves be tolerated no more. But reflection
cooled him. What is the good of being rid of Jesuit foxes if one falls
to Jansenist wolves? “We expel the Jesuits,” he wrote to that good old
friend of his, the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, in July, “and remain the prey
of the convulsionists. It is only Protestant princes who behave
sensibly. They keep priests in their right place.”
None of these reflections taken singly, nor all of them taken together,
prevented Voltaire from receiving into his house--“as chaplain,” he said
sardonically--the Jesuit priest called Father Adam, whom he had known at
Colmar in 1754, and whose acquaintance he had since renewed at
neighbouring Ornex. To be sure, Voltaire had no need to be afraid of any
priestly influence, especially from one of whom he was fond of saying,
that though Father Adam, he was not the first of men.
Like the Protestant princes, Voltaire knew very well how to keep _his_
priest in his proper place. The Father was an indolent man, with a
little fortune of his own and a rather quarrelsome disposition. But he
made himself useful at Ferney for thirteen years by entertaining the
visitors and playing chess with his lord and master. One of the visitors
declared that Adam was Jesuit enough to let himself be beaten at the
game--his opponent so dearly loved to win! But another, La Harpe, who
was at Ferney a whole year, denies this and declares that Voltaire
frequently lost the game, and his temper, and when he saw things were
going badly with him told anecdotes to distract his adversary’s
attention. A third authority states that when the game was practically
lost to him, M. de Voltaire would begin gently humming a tune. If Adam
did not take the hint and retire at once, Voltaire flung the chessmen
one after another at the Father’s head. Prudent Adam, however, usually
left at once. When Voltaire had become calmer, he would call out
profanely, “Adam, where art thou?” The Father came back; and the game
was resumed as if nothing had happened.
Another member of a colony, which, as Voltaire said, was enough to make
one die of laughter, was the fat Swiss servant, Barbara or Bonne-Baba,
who showed her contempt for her illustrious master quite plainly and to
his great enjoyment, and assured him she could not understand how
anybody could be silly enough to think he had an ounce of common-sense.
If it was a laughable household, it was, as its master also said, a
household that laughed from morning till night, and could be, that
lively cripple d’Aumard included, as light-hearted as childhood.
But through all, never forgotten for a moment or put aside for a day,
was the affair of Calas.
On March 7, 1763, that affair had its first triumph. On that day the
Council of Paris met at Versailles, the Chancellor presiding, and all
the councillors and ministers, religious and civil, attending, and
decreed that there should be a new trial and that the Toulouse
Parliament should produce the records of the old. Madame Calas and her
two girls were present. All through the winter it had been considered an
honour to call upon them, or to meet them at the d’Argentals’ house.
Councillors and officials vied with each other in thoughtful attentions
to them all. During the sitting of the court one of the girls fainted,
and was nearly killed with kindness. Some person, thought to be young
Lavaysse, with a style charmingly candid and simple, has written an
account of the day. Not only was the court “all Calas”--its eighty-four
members unanimously voted for the case to be retried--but her Catholic
Majesty, Marie Leczinska herself, who had by no means forgotten to hate
their great _avocat_, Voltaire, received Madame Calas and her daughters
with kindness. The King himself had “formally approved” that the papers
of the procedure at Toulouse should be sent to the Council of Paris. The
hostile influence of Saint-Florentin had been more than counteracted by
the favourable, though secret, influence of Choiseul.
When Voltaire, waiting feverishly at Ferney, heard the long-hoped-for
decree, his heart gave one great leap of joy. “Then there _is_ justice
on the earth; there _is_ humanity,” he wrote. “Men are not all rogues,
as people say; ... it seems to me that the day of the Council of State
is a great day for philosophy.”
He eagerly concluded that this at last was the beginning of the end. But
there was still infinite room for that slow courage called patience.
Now being passed from hand to hand in Paris, and having been so passed
since the beginning of the year 1763, was what may be called the fruit
of the Calas case: fruit of which men to-day may still eat and live: the
pamphlet of two hundred pages which advanced by many years the reign of
justice, of mercy, and of humanity--the “Treatise on Tolerance.”
That sermon, of which the text is Calas, is one of the most powerful
indictments ever written against the religious who have enough religion
to hate and persecute, but not enough to love and succour. Voltaire was
no Protestant, but that “Treatise” helped the “definite affranchisement”
of the Protestant in Catholic countries as no party tract ever did. It
gave the fatal blow to that “Gothic legislation” which, if it was dying,
still showed now and then a superhuman strength in acts of fiendish
barbarism. Sooner or later, said Choiseul, such seed as is sown in
Voltaire’s Gospel of Tolerance _must_ bear fruit. What if the author of
it had thrown decency to the winds in the “Pucelle”? What if, basing his
attack on seemingly irreconcilable statements and incorrect dates, he
had in keen mockery attacked the Scripture and Christianity? Not the
less “the true Christian, like the true philosopher, will agree that in
making tolerance and humanity prevail, Voltaire, whether he wished it or
no, served the religion of the God of peace and mercy: and, instead of
anger, will feel a reverent admiration for the ways of a Providence
which, for such a work, chose such a workman.”
Voltaire did not avow his little Treatise. What censor would or could
have licensed such a thing? For a long time it was not even printed. By
Voltaire? What could make you think so? The old owl of Ferney screwed up
his brilliant eyes and chuckled. “Mind you do not impute to me the
little book on Tolerance.... It will not be by me. It could not be. It
is by some good soul who loves persecution as he loves the colic.”
That he foresaw it would be one of his best passports to posterity, did
not make him in the least degree more anxious to own it to his
contemporaries. Abundant experience had proved to him that if it is “an
ill lot to be a man of letters at all, there is something still more
dangerous in loving the truth.”
So through the year 1763 the “Treatise on Tolerance” was passed from
hand to hand in Paris: by a good priest, you understand; by nobody in
particular. And at Ferney, Voltaire, having preached tolerance,
practised it.
At the convent into which Nanette Calas had been thrown was a good
Superior who had loved and pitied the girl and poured out upon her the
thwarted maternal instincts of her woman’s heart. It is very pleasant to
see how a hot partisan like Voltaire not only gave the Sister her due,
but dwelt tenderly on her tenderness; sent on to his brethren, the
philosophers, her kind little letters to Nanette; and warmed his old
heart at the pure flame of the affection of this “good nun of the
Visitation.”
Then, too, when in June the liberal-minded citizens of Geneva appealed
against the condemnation of rival Rousseau’s “Émile,” and when on August
8th that condemnation was revoked at their request, Voltaire was quite
as delighted as if Jean Jacques had always been his dearest friend, and
as if he had thought anything about that hysterical “Émile,” except the
“Profession of the Savoyard Vicar,” worth the paper it was written on.
Tolerance! Tolerance!
About the same time he produced the “Catechism of an Honest Man,” which
had a like burden; and before the year 1763 was out he was deeply
engaged in helping other unfortunates whom the case of Calas and that
“Treatise” threw at his feet.
In 1740, a daring Protestant gentleman of that fatal Languedoc, called
Espinas, or Espinasse, gave supper and a bed to a minister of his faith.
For this heinous crime he was condemned to the galleys for life, and had
been there three-and-twenty years when his story reached Ferney. Through
Voltaire’s exertions he was released in 1763, and came to Switzerland,
where his wife and children were living as paupers, on public charity.
After interceding passionately for them for not less than three years,
Voltaire succeeded in getting back a small part of the property which
Espinas had forfeited on his imprisonment.
After Espinas came the case of Chaumont. In February, 1764, Voltaire
was writing to Végobre to say that Choiseul had delivered from the
galleys one Chaumont, whose crime had consisted in listening to an
open-air Protestant preacher--“praying to God in bad French.” He had
companions in irons whom Voltaire’s power and pity could not free. But
Chaumont himself came to Ferney to thank his benefactor; and all
Voltaire’s little _entourage_ made him compliments, including Father
Adam.
Though that “Tolerance” was not yet tolerated in Paris; though at the
beginning of 1764 it was forbidden to go through the post, as if it
contained the germs of some infectious disease; though Calas was still
unexculpated, and even powerful Choiseul could not push his authority
far enough to liberate the innocent companions of Chaumont, still
Voltaire thought that he saw light in the sky, and in the east the
beginning of a beautiful day. “Everything I see,” he wrote in prophetic
utterance on April 2d, “sows the seeds of a Revolution which must
infallibly come. I shall not have the pleasure of beholding it. The
French reach everything late, but they do reach it at last. Young people
are lucky: they will see great things.” And again: “I shall not cease to
preach Tolerance upon the housetops ... until persecution is no more.
The progress of right is slow, the roots of prejudice deep. I shall
never see the fruits of my efforts, but they are seeds which must one
day germinate.”
Tolerance! Tolerance! Between writing it, living it, dreaming it, the
thing might have become a monomania, a possession. Only its great
apostle was also a Frenchman--the most versatile son of the most
versatile people on earth.
At the end of 1763 he had been privately circulating in Paris a gay
novelette in verse called “Gertrude, or the Education of a Daughter”;
and a little later he was reviewing English books for a Parisian
literary paper.
Then, too, in the autumn of 1763 the young Prince de Ligne--eighteen
years old, bright, shallow, amusing, “courtier of all Courts, favourite
of all kings, friend of all philosophers”--had been staying at Ferney.
It is said that before his arrival Voltaire, dreadfully fearing he
should be bored, took some strong medicine, so that he could say
(truthfully this time) he was too ill to appear. The very self-pleased
and much-admired young Prince is now chiefly known to the world by the
account he has given of Voltaire _intime_.
He writes vividly both of his host’s greatness and littleness; tells how
he loved the English, bad puns, and his best clothes; how his torrents
of visitors wearied him, and what artful designs he invented to get rid
of them; how good he was to the poor; how “he made all who were capable
of it think and speak”; was charmed to find a musical talent in his
shoemaker--“_Mon Dieu!_ Sir, I put you at _my_ feet--I ought to beat
yours”--how he thought no one too obscure and insignificant to cheer
with the liveliest wit and the most amazing vivacity ever possessed by a
man of sixty-nine.
Ligne says he was quite delighted with the “sublime reply” of a
regimental officer to the question “What is your religion?”
“My parents brought me up in the Roman faith.” “Splendid answer!”
chuckles Voltaire. “He does not say what _he_ is!”
Early in 1764, young Boufflers, the son of that Madame de Boufflers who
was the mistress of King Stanislas, and perhaps Madame du Châtelet’s
predecessor in the heart of Saint-Lambert, also came to Ferney.
Boufflers was travelling _incognito_ as a young French artist. He did
not forget to write and tell his mother of his warm reception by her old
acquaintance. Voltaire, with that rare adaptability of his, easily
accommodated himself to his guest’s youth and treated him _en camarade_;
while Boufflers, on his part, drew with his artist’s pencil a clever
rough sketch of his host when he was losing at chess with Father Adam.
A further distraction from “Tolerance” and the Calas came in the shape
of the first public performance of “Olympie” in Paris, on March 17,
1764. It had already been named by the public “O l’impie!”--a title the
author was by no means going to apply to himself; while as for it
applying to the piece--“Nothing is more pious. I am only afraid that it
will not be good for anything but to be played in a convent of nuns on
the abbess’s birthday.”
“Olympie” was well received. But it was feeble, in spite of those many
alterations of which the indefatigable author vigorously said “You must
correct if you are eighty. I cannot bear old men who say ‘I have taken
my bent.’ Well, then, you old fools, take another!”
He also said that he had written it chiefly to put in notes at the end
on suicide, the duties of priests, and other subjects in which he was
interested; so it was not wonderful that even his friends had to own it
a failure.
When another play of his, called “The Triumvirate,” was performed in
July--purporting to be the work of an ex-Jesuit, and having cost its
dauntless master more trouble in rewriting and altering than any of his
other pieces--it was confessed a disaster by everyone.
But, after all, both pieces had served as a distraction to their author;
so they had their worth and use.
Another event in the spring of 1764 also changed the current of his
thoughts, turned them back to his far-away youth, and to the strifes and
weariness of a Court he had renounced for ever. On April 15th died
Madame de Pompadour. Voltaire was not behindhand in acknowledging that
he owed her much. To be sure, she had supported “that detestable
Crébillon’s detestable ‘Catilina,’” and had not been always a faithful
friend in other respects; but she had been as faithful as her position
permitted. She had had, too “a just mind”: she “thought aright.”
Of the easy manner in which Voltaire and his century regarded her morals
it need only be said that it affords an excellent insight into theirs.
“Cornélie-Chiffon” (as Voltaire called Marie Dupuits) “gave us a
daughter” in June. Before that date, Mademoiselle Dupuits, her
sister-in-law, portioned out of the “Corneille Commentary,” had been
married. Ferney was the resort of innumerable English, who came to see
M. de Voltaire’s plays, and told him what they thought of them with
their native candour. The first volume of “The Philosophical Dictionary”
slipped out in July, 1764, anonymously, “smelling horribly of the
fagot.” Voltaire of course swore industriously that he had nothing to
do with that “infernal Portatif,” and of course deceived nobody.
In September, he smuggled it, by a very underhand trick and with the
connivance of some booksellers of Geneva, into that town.
His friends, the Tronchins, were so angry at the _ruse_ that through
their agency the “Dictionary” was burnt there in the same month by the
executioner.
And then that great work, the rehabilitation of the Calas, was completed
at last. In June, 1764, the new trial had been begun. On March 9, 1765,
exactly three years since he had paid for it the extreme penalty of that
savage law, Calas was declared innocent of the murder of his son. With
his innocence was re-established that of his whole family, of Jeannette
Viguière, and of young Lavaysse. The accused had to constitute
themselves prisoners at the Conciergerie as a matter of form. There all
their friends visited them, including Damilaville, who wrote of the
visit to Voltaire. Still well known is Carmontel’s famous engraving of
this prison scene, with Lavaysse reading to the family, including
Jeannette, his “Memoir” on their case.
The Council who tried them had five sittings, each four hours in length,
and a sixth which lasted eight hours. There were forty judges who were
unanimous in their verdict--“Perfectly innocent.”
As all the money subscribed for Madame Calas by Voltaire’s efforts had
been swallowed up in law expenses and long journeys, these forty judges
petitioned the King for a grant to her and her children. And his Majesty
presented them with handsome gifts of money. The family then asked him
if he would object to them suing the Toulouse magistrates for damages.
But of this course Voltaire disapproved. “Let well alone,” he said in
substance: and they did.
It must be observed that not only had the sullen Parliament of Toulouse
put every obstacle in the way of the new trial taking place, but that it
never ratified the judgment of the Council of Paris. But that mattered
little. The worst that Toulouse could do was done.
One of the magistrates, the infamous David de Beaudrigue, “paid dearly
for the blood of the Calas.” In February, 1764, he was degraded from his
office. He afterwards committed suicide. That innocent blood was indeed
on him and his children. His grandson fell a victim to the fury of the
tigers of the Revolution, who had not forgotten the drama of the Rue des
Filatiers.
When the courier came with the news of the verdict to Ferney, young
Donat Calas was with Voltaire, and Voltaire said that his old eyes wept
as many tears as the boy’s. In a passion of delight he wrote to
Cideville that this was the most splendid fifth act ever seen on a
stage.
But he had not done with the Calas yet. The King’s gifts of money were
insufficient. So Voltaire got up subscriptions for engravings of
Carmontel’s picture, and made all his rich friends subscribe handsomely
for copies. One hung over his own bed for the rest of his life.
Peter and Donat Calas settled in Geneva. When in 1770 their mother and
Lavaysse visited them there, they all came on to Ferney. Voltaire said
that he cried like a child. He never forgot to do everything in his
power to benefit and help the two young men, and gave at least one of
them employment in his weaving industry when he established it at
Ferney.
The Calas case was not without wide results on current literature, art,
and the drama.
Coquerel, who wrote a history of the case, states that there are no
fewer than one hundred and thirteen publications relating to it. It
forms the subject of ten plays and “seven long poems.”
Besides Carmontel’s engraving, there are pictures of “Jean Calas saying
Good-bye to his Family,” “Voltaire promising his support to the Calas
Family,” and many others.
But its most important, its one immortal result, was the “Treatise on
Tolerance”--the work of the man without whom Calas would never have been
avenged, and _l’infâme_ been left unchecked till the Revolution.
It is hardly possible to overestimate the nobility of Voltaire’s part in
the redemption of the Calas.
A man who did not love him said justly that such a deed would cover a
multitude of sins. “_Oh mon amie! le bel emploi du génie!_” wrote
Diderot to Mademoiselle Voland.... “What are the Calas to him? Why
should he stop the work he loves to defend them? If there were a Christ,
surely Voltaire would be saved.”
When one reflects on the enormous expenditure of time, labour, and money
the case required of him, and the fact that he thoroughly knew the value
of each, Diderot’s words do not seem greatly exaggerated.
To suppose he had any thought of his own glory in the matter is not
reasonable. He persistently gave the lion’s share of the credit to Élie
de Beaumont. He himself had already as much fame as man could want. If
he _had_ wanted more, he knew to it a thousand avenues quicker and safer
than the long Via Dolorosa of a legal reparation.
That kind of fame would only endanger his person and prestige, and make
his chances of being well received by King and Court weaker than ever.
But that he _did_ recognise Calas as one of the best works of his nobler
self seems likely from a trifling incident.
Thirteen years later, on his last visit to Paris, someone, seeing the
crowds that surrounded him whenever he went out into the street, asked a
poor woman who this person was who was so much followed.
“It is the saviour of the Calas,” she replied.
No flattery, no honour, no acclamation of that glorious time gave
Voltaire, it is said, so keen a pleasure as that simple answer.