Months passed, and years. Voltaire inserted in his “History of Louis XV.” an able exculpation of Lally. It was something. But it was not enough.
In 1769, he wrote that Lally and his gag, Sirven, Calas, Martin, the Chevalier de la Barre, came before him sometimes in dreams. “People think our century only ridiculous, but it is horrible.” In 1773, he wrote that he still had on his heart the blood of Lally and the Chevalier de la Barre.
Still? For ever till they were avenged. He had read English books on Lally’s case. The English had had no reason to love Lally, but they regarded his sentence as a barbarous injustice.
And then, early in this year 1773, Lally’s young son, whom the father had charged to avenge his memory, sent his first Memoir on the case to Voltaire and asked his assistance.
Voltaire had been very ill—really ill, not fancifully so—with the gout, and he was in his eightieth year. But this “avocat of lost causes” had his old burning zeal.
He first began by telling the young Chevalier de Lally-Tollendal, out of his abundant experience, and in a letter dated April 28, 1773, what to do and what not to do. “As for me, I will be your secretary.” Lally-Tollendal, then two-and-twenty years old, had at fifteen written a Latin poem on Jean Calas. He thus already knew his Voltaire. The King had paid for his education—a confession of, or an amende for, the injustice which had killed his father. He was to be one of the aristocratic democrats of the French Revolution, a refugee in England, and, in 1815, peer of France. But now he was nothing and nobody, and alone could never have fulfilled his father’s trust.
For many weeks the labour of “The Historical Fragments of the History of India and of General Lally” occupied Voltaire “day and night.” It cost him, he told Madame du Deffand, more than any other work of his life. It had to be amusing in the history because the monkeys, who formed one half of the nation, would not read history unless it was amusing; and pathetic enough, as touching General Lally, to melt the hearts of the tigers who formed the other half.
Then there were pamphlets to be written, and Madame Dubarry to be won over. Through her, Lally-Tollendal got his commission in the army. Through Voltaire, on May 26, 1778, Louis XVI. in council publicly vindicated General Lally.
In a room in the Hôtel Villette, at the corner of the Rue de Beaune in Paris, a dying old Voltaire received that news. The splendid intellect which had served him for more than eighty years, as never mind served man before, was waning too. But for a moment its strength came back. To Lally-Tollendal Voltaire dictated his last letter.
“The dead returns to life on learning this great news; he tenderly embraces M. Lally; he sees that the King is the Defender of Justice; and will die, content.”