[ Tallentyre's commentary: Damilaville was Voltaire's Paris correspondent and factotum in general, and was constantly employed in transmitting books and news to Ferney.

This letter--meant for the public eye as much as for M. Damilaville's--gives an excellent account, in brief, of the two great causes célèbres which long engrossed Voltaire's superb talents and energies, and which he made famous all over Europe. What the letter lays little stress on, is his own sacrifices, in money as well as in the time he valued far above money, on his burning zeal and his invincible perseverance, which at last brought both cases to triumphant conclusions. On behalf of the Calas he had written not only Memoirs and Declarations and The History of Elizabeth Canning and of the Calas (taking care that they should be translated into foreign languages and published in foreign countries) but also the famous Treatise on Tolerance, which still lives, and dealt the death-blow to the cruel injustice hitherto meted to the Protestant in Catholic countries. On March 9, 1765, just a week after this letter was written, the innocence of Calas and his family was publicly declared by forty judges of the Council of Paris, unanimous in their verdict; and it only remained to him, who, it is said, loved none of his titles to fame so well as that of the "saviour of the Calas," to promote the further welfare of the Calas boys and of their mother.

The Sirvens' case was less dramatic. As Voltaire said, "it lacked a scaffold." But when they clung about his feet and implored him to save them also, he was not the man to pass by on the other side as his priestly friend advised him.

For seven years he laboured to get their case re-tried, giving to it unstintingly, as he had given to the Calas, his time, fame, brains, money, and influence: but it was not until 1771, when he was seventy-seven years old, that the Parliament of Toulouse completely exculpated the accused; having taken, as Voltaire said, two hours to condemn innocence and nine years to give it justice.

"The new Memoir of M. de Beaumont." Elie de Beaumont--hereafter a famous and brilliant avocat--was quite unknown when Voltaire chose him to be, with d'Alembert and Mariette (already celebrated), counsel for Mme. Calas--Voltaire paying all expenses himself. De Beaumont's Memoir showed "three impossibilities" in the way of Calas' having murdered tris son. "The fourth," said Voltaire, "is that of resisting your arguments. "

"A lady whose generosity is as noble as her birth"--the Duchesse d'Enville, a patient of Voltaire's friend, Dr. Tronchin. She helped the Calas not only with money but by representing their case to Saint-Florentin, Chancellor of France.

"It has not found Mariettes, Beaumonts and Loiiseau."--In point of fact, in a letter written a few days after this one, Voltaire announced that Elie de Beaumont would defend the Sirvens, as he had defended the Calas.

"I was myself giving shelter to a Jesuit"--Father Adam ("but not," as Voltaire said, "the first of men"), whose acquaintance Voltaire had made at Colmar, and to whom he gave hospitality for thirteen years.

"Who else . . . has defended the memory of a great prince against the abominable inventions of a writer, whoever he may be." The "great prince" was the Regent Orleans. The traducer, as Voltaire knew very well, was that La Beaumelle who had published Voltaire's Century of Louis XIV with notes of his own.

"The vile mercenary who twice a month outrages sense, etc." This was Freron, Voltaire's old enemy, in tris scandalous periodical the Année Littéraire.

"The sage of Montbar" was Buffon, the famous naturalist.

"The sage of Vore" was Voltaire's friend and protégé, Helvétius. After Helvétius settled on his estate at Vore, in Burgundy, in 1751, he had shown himself--that rare phenomenon in the eighteenth century--a model landowner and an enlightened philanthropist. ]

FERNEY, March 1, 1765

My dear friend, I have devoured the new Memoir of M. de Beaumont on the innocence of the Calas; I have admired and wept over it, but it told me nothing I did not know; I have long been convinced, and it was I who was lucky enough to furnish the first proofs.

You would like to know how this European protest against the judicial murder of the unhappy Calas, broken on the wheel at Toulouse, managed to reach a little unknown corner of the world, between the Alps and the Jura, a hundred miles from the scene of the fearful event.

Nothing more clearly reveals the existence of that imperceptible chain which links all the events of this miserable world.

At the end of March, 1762, a traveller, who had come through Languedoc and arrived in my little retreat two miles from Geneva, told me of the sacrifice of Calas, and assured me that he was innocent. I answered him that the crime was not a probable one, but that it was still more improbable that Calas' judges should, without any motive, break an innocent man on the wheel.

I heard the next day that one of the children of this unfortunate man had taken refuge in Switzerland, fairly near my cottage. His flight made me presume the guilt of the family. However, I reflected that the father had been condemned to death for having, by himself, assassinated his son on accourt of his religion, and that, at the time of his death, this father was sixty-nine years old. I never remember to have read of any old man being possessed by so horrible a fanaticism. I have always observed that this mania is usually confined to young people, with weak, heated, and unstable imaginations, inflamed by superstition. The fanatics of the Cevennes were madmen from twenty to thirty years of age, trained to prophesy since childhood. Almost all the convulsionists I had seen in any large numbers in Paris were young girls and boys. Among the monks the old are less carried away and less fiable to the fury of the zealot than those just out of their novitiate. The notorious assassins, goaded by religious frenzy, have all been young people, as have all those who have pretended to be possessed--no one ever saw an old man exorcised. This reasoning made me doubt a crime, which was, moreover, unnatural. I was ignorant of its circumstances.

I had young Calas to my house. I expected to find him a religious enthusiast, such as his country has sometimes produced. I found a simple and ingenuous youth, with a gentle and very interesting countenance, who, as he talked to me, made vain efforts to restrain his tears. He told me that he was at Nîmes, apprenticed to a manufacturer, when he heard that his whole family was about to be condemned to death at Toulouse, and that almost all Languedoc believed them guilty. He added that, to escape so fearful a disgrace, he had come to Switzerland to hide himself.

I asked him if his father and mother were of a violent character. He told me that they had never beaten any one of their children, and that never were parents more tender and indulgent.

I confess that no more was needed to give me a strong presumption in favour of the innocence of the family. I gathered fresh information from two merchants of Geneva, of proven honesty, who had lodged at the Calas' house in Toulouse. They confirmed me in my opinion. Far from believing the Calas family to be fanatics and parricides, I thought I saw that it was the fanatics who had accused and ruined them. I had long known of what party spirit and calumny are capable.

But what was my astonishment when, having written to Languedoc on the subject of this extraordinary story, Catholics and Protestants answered that there was no doubt as to the crime of the Calas! I was not disheartened. I took the liberty of writing to those in authority in the province, to the governors of neighbouring provinces, and to ministers of state: all unanimously advised me not to mix myself up in such a horrible affair: everybody blamed me: and I persisted: this is what I did.

Calas' widow (from whom, to fill to the brim her cup of misery and insult, her daughters had been forcibly removed) had retired into solitude, where she lived on the bread of tears, and awaited death. I did not enquire if she was, or was not, attached to the Protestant religion, but only if she believed in a God who rewarded virtue and punished crime. I asked her if she would sign a solemn declaration, as before God, that her husband died innocent: she did not hesitate. She had to be persuaded to leave her retirement and to undertake the journey to Paris.

It is then apparent that, if there are great crimes on the earth, there are as many virtues; and that, if superstition produces horrible sufferings, philosophy redresses them.

A lady, whose generosity is as noble as her birth, and who was staying at Geneva to have her daughters inoculated, was the first to succour this unhappy family. French people living in this country seconded her: the travelling English distinguished themselves: there was a beneficent rivalry between the two nations as to which should give the more to virtue so cruelly oppressed.

As to the sequel, who knows it better than you? Who has served innocence with a zeal as faithful and courageous? Who has more generously encouraged the voice of those orators whom all France and Europe paused to hear? The days when Cicero justified, before an assembly of legislators, Amerinus accused of parricide, are with us again. A few people, calling themselves pious, have raised their voices against the Calas: but, for the first time since fanaticism was established, the wise have silenced them.

What great victories reason is winning among us! But would you believe, my dear friend, that the family of the Calas, so efficiently succoured and avenged, was not the only one that religion accused of parricide--was not the only one sacrificed to the furies of religious persecution? There is a case yet more pitiable, because, while experiencing the same horrors, it has not had the same consolations: it has not found Mariettes, Beaumonts, and Loiseau.

There appears to be a horrible mania, indigenous to Languedoc, originally sown there by the inquisitors in the train of Simon de Montfort, which, ever since then, from time to time hoists its flag.

A native of Castres, named Sirven, had three daughters. As the religion of the family is the so-called reformed religion, the youngest of the daughters was torn from the arms of her mother. She was put into a convent, where they beat her to help her to learn her catechism: she went mad: and threw herself into a well at a place not far from her parents' house. The bigots thereupon made up their minds that her father, mother, and sisters had drowned the child. The Catholics of the province are absolutely convinced that one of the chief points of the Protestant religion is that the fathers and mothers are bound to hang, strangle, or drown any of their children whom they suspect of any leaning towards the Catholic faith. Precisely at the moment when the Calas were in iroris, this fresh scaffold was uplifted.

The story of the drowned girl reached Toulouse at once. Everyone declared it to be a fresh instance of murderous parents. The public fury grew daily: Calas was broken on the wheel: Sirven, his wife, and his daughter were accused. Sirven, terrified, had just time to flee with his delicate family. They went on foot, with no creature to help them, across precipitous mountains, deep in snow. One of the daughters gave birth to an infant among the glaciers: and, herself dying, bore her dying child in her arms: they finally took the road to Switzerland.

The same fate which brought the children of the Calas to me, decided that the Sirvens should also appeal to me. Picture to yourself, my friend, four sheep accused by the butchers of having devoured a lamb: for that is what I saw. I despair of describing to you so much innocence and so much sorrow. What ought I to have done? and what would you have done in my place? Could I rest satisfied with cursing human nature? I took the liberty of writing to the first president of Languedoc, a wise and good man: but he was not at Toulouse. I got one of my friends to present a petition to the vice-chancellor. During this time, near Castres, the father, mother, and two daughters were executed in effigy: their property confiscated and dissipated--to the last sou.

Here was an entire family--honest, innocent, virtuous--left to disgrace and beggary among strangers: some, doubtless, pitied them: but it is hard to be an object of pity to one's grave! I was finally informed that remission of their sentence was a possibility. At first, I believed that it was the judges from whom that pardon must be obtained. You will easily understand that the family would sooner have begged their bread from door to door, or have died of want, than ask a pardon which admitted a crime too horrible to be pardonable. But how could justice be obtained? how could they go back to prison in a country where half the inhabitants still said that Calas' murder was just? Would there be a second appeal to Council? would anyone try to rouse again the public sympathy which, it might well be, the misfortunes of the Calas had exhausted, and which would weary of refuting such accusations, of reinstating the condemned, and of confounding their judges?

Are not these two tragic events, my friend, so rapidly following each other, proofs of the inevitable decrees of fate, to which our miserable species is subject? A terrible truth, so much insisted on in Homer and Sophocles: but a useful truth, since it teaches us to be resigned and to learn how to suffer.

Shall I add that, while the incredible calamities of the Calas and the Sirvens wrung my heart, a man, whose profession you will guess from what he said, reproached me for taking so much interest in two families who were strangers to me? "Why do you mix yourself up in such things?" he asked; "let the dead bury their dead." I answered him, "I found an Israelite in the desert--an Israelite covered in blood; suffer me to pour a little wine and oil into his wounds. you are the Levite, leave me to play the Samaritan."

It is true that, as a reward for my trouble, I have been treated quite as a Samaritan: a defamatory libel appeared under the titles of A Pastoral Instruction and A Charge: but it may well be forgotten--a Jesuit wrote it. The wretch did not know then that I was myself giving shelter to a Jesuit! Could I prove more conclusively that we should regard our enemies as our brethren?

Your passions are humanity, a love of truth, and a hatred of calumny. Our friendship is founded on the similarity of our characters. I have spent my life in seeking and publishing the truth which I love. Who else among modern historians has defended the memory of a great prince against the abominable inventions of a writer, whoever he may be, who might well be called the traducer of kings, ministers, and military commanders, and who now has not a single reader ?

I have only done in the fearful cases of the Calas and the Sirvens what all men do: I have followed my bent. A philosopher's is not to pity the unhappy--it is to be of use to them.

I know how furiously fanaticism attacks philosophy, whose two daughters, Truth and Tolerance, fanaticism would fain destroy as it destroyed the Calas: while philosophy only wishes to render innocuous the offspring of fanaticism, Falsehood and Persecution.

Those who do not reason try to bring into discredit those who do: they have confused the philosopher with the sophist: and have greatly deceived themselves. The true philosopher can be aroused against the calumny which so often attacks himself: he can overwhelm with everlasting contempt the vile mercenary who twice a month outrages sense, good taste, and morality: he can even expose to ridicule, in passing, those who insult literature in the sanctuary where they should have honoured it: but he knows nothing of cabals, underhand dealings, or petty revenge. Like the sage of Montbar, like the sage of Vore, he knows how to make the land fruitful and those who dwell on it happier. The real philosopher clears uncultivated ground, adds to the number of ploughs and, so, to the number of inhabitants: employs and enriches the poor: encourages marriages and finds a home for the orphan: does not grumble at necessary taxes, and puts the agriculturist in a condition to pay them promptly. He expects nothing from others, and does them all the good he can. He has a horror of hypocrisy, but he pities the superstitious: and, finally, he knows how to be a friend.

I perceive that I am painting your portrait: the resemblance would be perfect, were you so fortunate as to live in the country.