When another play of his, called “The Triumvirate,” was performed in July—purporting to be the work of an ex-Jesuit, and having cost its dauntless master more trouble in rewriting and altering than any of his other pieces—it was confessed a disaster by everyone.
But, after all, both pieces had served as a distraction to their author; so they had their worth and use.
Another event in the spring of 1764 also changed the current of his thoughts, turned them back to his far-away youth, and to the strifes and weariness of a Court he had renounced for ever. On April 15th died Madame de Pompadour. Voltaire was not behindhand in acknowledging that he owed her much. To be sure, she had supported “that detestable Crébillon’s detestable ‘Catilina,’” and had not been always a faithful friend in other respects; but she had been as faithful as her position permitted. She had had, too “a just mind”: she “thought aright.”
Of the easy manner in which Voltaire and his century regarded her morals it need only be said that it affords an excellent insight into theirs.
“Cornélie-Chiffon” (as Voltaire called Marie Dupuits) “gave us a daughter” in June. Before that date, Mademoiselle Dupuits, her sister-in-law, portioned out of the “Corneille Commentary,” had been married. Ferney was the resort of innumerable English, who came to see M. de Voltaire’s plays, and told him what they thought of them with their native candour. The first volume of “The Philosophical Dictionary” slipped out in July, 1764, anonymously, “smelling horribly of the fagot.” Voltaire of course swore industriously that he had nothing to do with that “infernal Portatif,” and of course deceived nobody.
In September, he smuggled it, by a very underhand trick and with the connivance of some booksellers of Geneva, into that town.
His friends, the Tronchins, were so angry at the ruse that through their agency the “Dictionary” was burnt there in the same month by the executioner.
And then that great work, the rehabilitation of the Calas, was completed at last. In June, 1764, the new trial had been begun. On March 9, 1765, exactly three years since he had paid for it the extreme penalty of that savage law, Calas was declared innocent of the murder of his son. With his innocence was re-established that of his whole family, of Jeannette Viguière, and of young Lavaysse. The accused had to constitute themselves prisoners at the Conciergerie as a matter of form. There all their friends visited them, including Damilaville, who wrote of the visit to Voltaire. Still well known is Carmontel’s famous engraving of this prison scene, with Lavaysse reading to the family, including Jeannette, his “Memoir” on their case.
The Council who tried them had five sittings, each four hours in length, and a sixth which lasted eight hours. There were forty judges who were unanimous in their verdict—“Perfectly innocent.”
As all the money subscribed for Madame Calas by Voltaire’s efforts had been swallowed up in law expenses and long journeys, these forty judges petitioned the King for a grant to her and her children. And his Majesty presented them with handsome gifts of money. The family then asked him if he would object to them suing the Toulouse magistrates for damages.