ood 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. They gave out that it was a practice of the
Protestants to keep an executioner to murder their children who wished
to abjure the reformed faith, and that one of the objects of the
meetings which they held in the Desert, was to elect this executioner.
The White Penitents celebrated mass for the suicide's soul; they
exhibited his figure with a palm branch in his hand, and treated him
as a martyr.

The public mind became inflamed. A fanatical judge, called David, took
up the case, and ordered Calas and his whole family to be sent to
prison. Calas was tried by the court of Toulouse. They tortured the
whole family to compel them to confess the murder;[73] but they did
not confess. The court wished to burn the mother, but they ended by
condemning the paralytic father to be broken alive on the wheel.[74]
The parliament of Toulouse confirmed the atrocious sentence, and the
old man perished in torments, declaring to the last his entire
innocence. The rest of the family were discharged, although if there
had been any truth in the charge for which Jean Calas was racked to
death, they must necessarily have been his accomplices, and equally
liable to punishment.

[Footnote 73: Sismondi, xx. 328.]

[Footnote 74: To be broken alive on the wheel was one of the
most horrible of tortures, a bequest from ages of violence
and barbarism. It was preserved in France mainly for the
punishment of Protestants. The prisoner was extended on a St.
Andrew's cross, with eight notches cut on it--one below each
arm between the elbow and wrist, another between each elbow
and the shoulders, one under each thigh, and one under each
leg. The executioner, armed with a heavy triangular bar of
iron, gave a heavy blow on each of these eight places, and
broke the bone. Another blow was given in the pit of the
stomach. The mangled victim was lifted from the cross and
stretched on a small wheel placed vertically at one of the
ends of the cross, his back on the upper part of the wheel,
his head and feet hanging down. There the tortured creature
hung until he died. Some lingered five or six hours, others
much lon