Donat Calas, the youngest of the family, the apprentice at Nîmes, had had to leave France when the trial came on, for fear of being indicted as an accomplice. He went to Geneva.
On March 22, 1762, only twelve days after the death of Jean Calas, Voltaire mentioned the case in writing to Le Bault. He was not at once moved to take any side. The affair was not his. But if he did take any, it was the side of Catholicism. “We are not worth much,” he said airily, “but the Huguenots are worse than we are. They declaim against comedy.”
But the affair made him think. Two days later he wrote that it “took him by the heart.” Then he learnt that Donat was near him—at Geneva; that the boy had fled there on hearing of the trial. That seemed like guilt. “I am interested as a man, and a little as a philosopher. I want to know on which side is this horror of fanaticism.” At the end of March, Audibert, a merchant of Marseilles, who had happened to be in Toulouse when the Calas tragedy was enacted, called on Voltaire and told him the facts of the case as they had appeared to him. Foul play somewhere, thinks Alain’s pupil and Arouet’s son, putting those facts together. But where? “I told him (Audibert) that the crime of Calas was not probable; but it was still more improbable that disinterested judges should condemn an innocent man to be broken on the wheel.”
Disinterested? There lay the crux. Voltaire’s feelings were roused; but they had not run away with him. On March 27th, he wrote to d’Argental: “You will ask me, perhaps, why I interest myself so strongly in this Calas who was broken on the wheel? It is because I am a man.... Could you not induce M. de Choiseul to have this fearful case investigated?”
Every day, nay every hour, a mind far keener and shrewder than any Choiseul’s was investigating it then: collecting evidence; writing innumerable letters; working, working; tempering with cool discretion a zeal that burnt hotter every moment as the innocence of Calas forced itself upon his soul; labouring with that “fiery patience,” that critical judiciousness, which in such a case alone could win.
At the end of April he went from Ferney to Délices, that he might be nearer Donat Calas; study him; hear an account of his family from his own lips. The boy was only fifteen; cried when he told that piteous story; and spoke of both his father and mother as infinitely kind and indulgent to all their children.
Lest he should be moved by those emotions which grew stronger every day, or by a moral conviction in the innocence of Calas not fully borne out by physical facts, Voltaire sought the opinion of wise and capable friends. He employed Végobre, an able (and notably unimaginative) lawyer of Geneva, to investigate legal points; and for hours and hours would remain closeted with him. Ribotte-Charon, a merchant of Toulouse, himself warmly interested in the case, Voltaire induced to examine the site of the supposed murder and to study local details. Chazel, a solicitor of Montpellier, he engaged to interview the leading magistrates of the Languedoc district and to procure documents.
But to obtain a formal investigation of the affair it was necessary to get the ear of the Chancellor of France, the Count of Saint-Florentin. Voltaire incited every powerful friend he had in the world to assail this person. Villars and Richelieu were made to bombard him. What was the use of Dr. Tronchin’s famous and influential patients if they could not be induced to attack M. Florentin too? Tronchin roused them, and they did as they were told. At Geneva was the Duchesse d’Enville, also a Tronchin patient, clever, powerful, and enlightened. Voltaire fired her with his own enthusiasm, and she wrote direct to Saint-Florentin. As for Madame de Pompadour and Choiseul, Voltaire undertook them himself. The Pompadour was always “one of us” in her heart; and while she hated the Jesuits, Choiseul did not love them.
By the end of June, Voltaire had brought Madame Calas up to Paris and begged his Angels, “in the name of humankind,” to take her broken life under their wings. She had not been easy to persuade to come. She was crushed to the earth, as she might well be. Hope for the future, or hope for vengeance for the past, she had none. Only one passionate desire seems to have been left her—to get back her daughters from the convents into which they had been forced. The property of criminals was then confiscated to the King, and she had not a farthing in the world. But Voltaire paid all her expenses—content to wait until the generosity of Europe should refund him. For counsel he gave her d’Alembert and the famous avocat, Mariette. On June 11th, he appointed Élie de Beaumont as Mariette’s colleague. It is always a part of cleverness to discover the cleverness of others. Beaumont was young and unknown; but he was a most able choice.
On July 4th, Peter Calas escaped from his monastery, and joined Donat at Geneva. Voltaire had thus the two brothers under observation. He put them through searching inquiries. Peter was naturally a most important witness.