Now, when called up by the watch and told of the mysterious death of Marc Antoine Calas, he jumped to the conclusion that it was a murder, and that the perpetrator was Jean Calas; in other words, that Calas was a parricide. The motives of the crime were not far to seek, he thought. One Calas son had already abjured the Protestant for the true faith, this now dead son was said to have been anxious to go over, and the father was resolved to prevent it at all cost. It was a commonly accepted superstition in those dark times that the Huguenots would decree the death of any traitors to their own faith.
Full of this baseless prepossession, De Beaudrigue thought only of what would confirm it. He utterly neglected the first duty of a police officer: to seek with an unbiassed mind for any signs or
indications that might lead to the detection of the real criminals. He should have at once examined the wardrobe in which the body was found pendent; the shop close at hand, the passage that led from it through a small courtyard into the back street. It was perfectly possible for ill-disposed people to enter the shop from the front street and escape by this passage, and possibly they might leave traces behind them.
De Beaudrigue thought only of securing those whom he already in his own mind condemned as guilty, and hurrying upstairs found the Calas, husband and wife, whom he at once arrested; Pierre Calas, whom he also suspected, was given in charge of two soldiers; the maid-servant, too, was taken, as well as two friends of the family who happened to be in the house at the time. When another capitoul mildly suggested a little less precipitation, De Beaudrigue replied that he would be answerable, and that he was acting in a holy cause.
The whole party was carried off to gaol. When the elder Calas asked to be allowed to put a candlestick where he might find it easily on his return, he was told sardonically, “You will not return in a hurry.” The request and its answer went far to produce a revulsion in his favour when the facts became known. The wretched man never re-entered his house, but he passed it on his way to the scaffold and knelt down to bless the place where he had lived happily for many years, and from which he had been so ruthlessly torn.
On the way to gaol the prisoners were greeted with yells and execrations. It was already taken for granted that they had murdered Marc Antoine. Arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, there was a short halt while the accusation was prepared charging the whole party as principals or accessories. An interrogatory followed which was no more than a peremptory summons to confess. “Come,” said the capitoul to Pierre, “confess you killed him.” Denial only exasperated De Beaudrigue, who began at once to threaten Calas and the rest with the torture.
There was absolutely no evidence whatever against the accused, and in the absence of it recourse was had to an ancient ecclesiastical practice, the monitoire, a solemn appeal made to the religious conscience of all who knew anything to come forward and declare it. This notice was affixed to the pulpits of churches and in street corners. It assumed the guilt of the Calas family quite illegally, because without the smallest proof, and it warned everyone to come forward and speak, whether from hearsay or of their own knowledge. Nothing followed the monitoire, so these pious sons of the Church went a step farther and obtained a fulmination; a threat to excommunicate all who could speak yet would not. This was duly launched, and caused great alarm. Religious sentiment had reached fever pitch. The burial of Marc Antoine with all the rites of the Church was a most imposing ceremony. He lay in state. The catafalque bore a notice to the effect that he had abjured heresy. He was honoured as a martyr; a little more and he would have been canonised as a saint.
