eve that any judges
would have condemned to a fearful death an innocent father of a family.
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 is Voltaire who is writing on behalf of this unfortunate
family," said Diderot to Mdlle. Voland: "O, my friend, what a noble work
for genius! This man must needs have soul and sensibility; injustice
must revolt him; he must feel the attraction of virtue. Why, what are
the Calas to him? What can awaken his interest in them? What reason has
he to suspend the labors he loves in order to take up their defence?"
From the borders of the Lake of Geneva, from his solitude at Genthod,
Charles Bonnet, far from favorable generally to Voltaire, writes to
Haller, "Voltaire has done a work on tolerance which is said to be good;
he will not publish it until after the affair of the unfortunate Calas
has been decided by the king's council. Voltaire's zeal for these
unfortunates might cover a multitude of sins; that zeal does not relax,
and, if they obtain satisfaction, it will be principally to his
championship that they will owe it. He receives much commendation for
this business, and he deserves it fully."

The sentence of the council cleared the accused and the memory of John
Calas, ordering that their names should be erased and effaced from the
registers, and the judgment transcribed upon the margin of the
charge-sheet. The king at the same time granted Madame Calas and her
children a gratuity of thirty-six thousand livres, a tacit and inadequate
compensation for the expenses and losses caused them by the fanatical
injustice of the Parliament of Toulouse. Madame Calas asked no more.
"To prosecute the judges and the ringleaders," said a letter to Voltaire
from the generous advocate of the Calas, Elias de Beaumont, "requires the
permission of the council, and there is great reason to fear that these
petty plebeian kings appear powerful enough to cause the permission,
through a weakness honored by the name of policy, to be refused."

Voltaire, however, was triumphant. "You were at Paris," he writes to
M. de Cideville, "when the last act of the tragedy finished so happily.
The piece is according to the rules; it is,