On July 5th, Voltaire first spoke to d’Argental of the “Original Documents concerning the Calas” which in this month he gave to the world. They are for all time a model of editorial genius. They consist only of an extract from a letter from Madame Calas, and of a letter from Donat Calas to his mother. Voltaire’s name did not appear at all. They contain that most damning of all evidence—a perfectly clear and simple statement of plain facts. If the editor contributed order and brevity, he left the quiet pathos of the woman and the passionate eagerness of the boy to speak for themselves.
The “Original Documents” he quickly followed up by a “Memoir and Declaration”: the “Memoir” purporting to be by Donat Calas, the “Declaration” by Peter.
Once again he wholly obliterated himself. Only a Voltaire’s genius could have curbed a Voltaire’s passion and made him rein in, even for a while, his own fiery eloquence, speak as those poor Calas would have spoken, and wait.
He knew now, by every proof which can carry conviction to the mind, that they were innocent: and he had given those proofs to the world.
But that was not enough. In August he published “The History of Elizabeth Canning and of the Calas.” Nothing he ever wrote shows more clearly how perfectly he understood that April nation, his countrymen. “Documents” and “Declarations”! Why, they at least sounded dull; and eighteenth-century Paris was not even going to run the risk of a yawn. “One might break half a dozen innocent people on the wheel, and in Paris people would only talk of the new comedy and think of a good supper.” But Paris loved to be made to laugh one moment and to weep the next; to have its quick pity touched and its quick humour tickled—in a breath.
“The History of Elizabeth Canning” is sarcastically amusing—an account of that enterprising young Englishwoman who nearly had another woman hanged on the strength of a story invented by herself and her relatives.
“It is in vain that the law wishes that two witnesses should be able to hang an accused. If the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury depose that they have seen me assassinate my father and my mother, and eat them whole for breakfast in a quarter of an hour, the Chancellor and the Archbishop must be sent to Bedlam, instead of burning me on their fine testimony. Put on one hand a thing absurd and impossible, and on the other a thousand witnesses and reasoners, and the impossibility ought to give the lie to all testimonies and reasonings.”
“The History of the Calas” was that sombre and terrible story told by a master mind: passionate, and yet cool; moving, and yet cautious in argument; the work at once of the ablest, keenest, shrewdest lawyer in the case, and of the man who said of himself, almost without exaggeration, that for three years, until Calas was vindicated, a smile never escaped him for which he did not reproach himself as for a crime.
He did not appeal to “that great and supreme judge of all suits and causes, public opinion,” in vain. The Calas case became the talk of Europe. Men felt, as Donat had been made to say in his Memoir, that “the cause was the cause of all families; of Nature; of religon; of the State; and of foreign countries.”
Voltaire had his Calas pamphlets translated and published in Germany and England. Generous England came forward with a subscription list for the unhappy family, headed by the young Queen of George III., and to which the Empress of Russia and the King of Poland became contributors.