The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

After the five prisoners had spent five months in separate dungeons, chained by the feet, the trial began. It must be remembered that of the accused one was Jeannette, an ardent Roman Catholic, who had not only helped to convert Louis, but who had given no offence to his Protestant relatives by so doing.

On March 9, 1762, Jean Calas was tried first, and alone, for the murder of his son on the previous October 13th. He was tried by thirteen members of the Toulouse Parliament who held ten sessions. The witnesses against him were of this kind: a painter named Mattei said that his wife had told him that a person named Mandrille had told her that some person unnamed had told her that he had heard Mark Anthony’s cries at the other end of the town. Some of the witnesses against Calas disappeared before the trial came on, feeling the strain on their inventive powers too great.

It was assumed by the prosecution that Mark Anthony could not have hanged himself in the place where the Calas swore they had found him; but, as has been noted, the prosecution never went to see the place.

For the prisoner, on the other hand, was the most overwhelming evidence.

First, it was the most unnatural of crimes. Secondly, it was impossible at the father’s age and weakness that he should have murdered his strong son alone. If he had not murdered him alone, it must have been with the assistance of the family party, of whom one was Jeannette, the ardent Catholic, and another was Lavaysse, the casual visitor.

The testimony of all these people for Calas agreed absolutely—except on one or two minor and wholly immaterial points.

But, in the case of this prisoner, it was not merely that the law of his day declared him guilty until he was proved innocent. Calas was declared guilty without being allowed a chance of proving himself innocent. The accused was never then permitted a counsel. But with Calas, the people sat on the judgment seat with Pilate; assumed the prisoner’s guilt, not without evidence, but in the teeth of it, and had condemned him before he was tried. Some of the magistrates themselves belonged to the confraternity of the White Penitents.

One of them only—M. de Lasalle—had the courage to object to the mockery of the proceedings. “You are all Calas,” said a brother judge. “And you,” answered Lasalle, “are all People.”

By eight votes to five, then, “a weak old man was to be condemned to the most awful of all deaths” (first the torture, and then to be broken on the wheel) “for having strangled and hanged with his feeble hands, in hatred of the Catholic religon, his robust and vigorous son who had no more inclination towards that religion than the father himself.” The words are the words of him who, said Madame du Deffand, became all men’s avocat, Voltaire.

Out of those thirteen judges three voted for torture only, and two suggested that it might be better to examine the shop at the Rue des Filatiers and see if a suicide were impossible. One hero alone voted for complete acquittal.