But still, to rouse men’s interest was but a means to an end. The end was to obtain first from the Council of Paris a decree ordering that the case should be re-tried, and then that fresh trial itself. The obstacles were not few or trifling. Louis XV. and Saint-Florentin, in spite of the influence brought to bear upon them, were both opposed to such a course. A too strict and searching justice did not suit the monarchy of France. Louis XV. was always wise enough to let sleeping dogs lie if he could, instead of convening States-General and dismissing and recalling ministers to please the people they governed, like that weak fool, his successor. “Why can’t you leave it alone?” was the motto of both King and Chancellor over the Calas case. And they would have lived up to it, but that the public opinion which had a Voltaire as its mouthpiece was too strong for them.
Another difficulty lay in the fact that Lavaysse père was so terrified by the Parliament of Toulouse that he took much persuading before he would appear openly on the side of Voltaire and as a witness for his own son. Then, too, the natural passionate eagerness of Madame Calas to get back her daughters, immediately and before the time was ripe, had to be curbed; and, far worse than all, that miserable Toulouse Parliament had so far entirely declined to furnish any of the papers concerning the trial, or even the decree of arrest.
MADEMOISELLE CLAIRON
From an Engraving after a Picture by Carle Van Loo
In September, Élie de Beaumont was ready with an able “Memoir” on the case, signed by fifteen of his brother barristers. He showed that there were “three impossibilities” in the way of Calas having murdered his son. “The fourth,” said Voltaire, “is that of resisting your arguments.” The “Memoir” was naturally more technical than Voltaire’s, but it was not more clever, nor half so moving.
Another friend of the case, the brave Lasalle, who had become “the public avocat for Calas in all the houses of Toulouse,” and had been challenged to a duel on the subject by a brother magistrate, was also in Paris in November. In December, through the untiring exertions of the Duchesse d’Enville, herself a mother, Nanette and Rose, the daughters, were restored to Madame Calas.
On December 29th, Voltaire wrote that this restoration was an infallible test of the progress of the case. But, he added, “it is shameful that the affair drags so long.”
Drags so long! Through the kindly veil that hides the future, even a Voltaire’s keen eyes could not penetrate. For nine months he had now dreamt Calas, worked Calas, lived Calas. Every letter he wrote is full of him. For that one man whom he had never seen, and who died as, after all, thousands of others had died, the victim of religious hatred, Voltaire forgot the drama which his soul loved, and that aggravating Jean Jacques’s latest novel, “Émile,” which his soul scorned. Calas! Calas! For those nine months the thing beat upon his brain as regularly and unremittingly as the sea breaks on the shore. For Calas was more than a case: he was a type.