It was evident that if this murder could in the nature of things have been committed, the accused persons were all of them equally guilty, because they did not quit each other’s company an instant the whole night; but then it was equally evident that they were not guilty, and that the father alone could not be so, and yet, by the sentence of the judges, the father alone was condemned to suffer.
The motive on which this sentence was passed was as unaccountable as all the rest of the proceeding. Those judges who had given their opinion for the execution of John Calas persuaded the others that this poor old man, unable to support the torments, would, when on the wheel, make a full confession of his own guilt and that of his accomplices; but how wretchedly were they confounded, when yielding up his breath on that instrument of execution, he called God as a witness of his innocence, and besought Him to forgive his judges!
They were afterwards obliged to pass a second decree, which contradicted the first, namely to set at liberty the mother, her son Peter, young Lavaisse, and the maid-servant; but one of the counsellors having made them sensible that this latter decree contradicted the other, and that they condemned themselves, inasmuch as, it having been proved that all the accused parties had been constantly together during the whole time the murder was supposed to be committed, the setting at liberty the survivors was an incontestable proof of the innocence of the master of the family whom they had ordered to be executed; on this it was determined to banish Peter Calas, the son, which was an act as ill-grounded and absurd as any of the rest, for Peter Calas was either guilty or not guilty of the murder; if he was guilty, he ought to have suffered in the same manner as his father; if he was innocent, there was no reason for banishing him. But the judges, frightened with the sufferings of the father, and with that affecting piety with which he had resigned his life, thought to preserve their characters by making people believe that they showed mercy to the son; as if this was not a new degree of prevarication, and that, thinking no bad consequences could arise from banishing this young man, who was poor and destitute of friends, was not a very great additional act of injustice after that which they had been already so unfortunate as to commit.
They now began to go to work with Peter Calas in his confinement, threatening to treat him as they had done his father, if he would not abjure his religion. This the young man has declared on oath, as follows:
“A Dominican friar came to me to my cell, and threatened me with the same kind of death if I did not abjure; this I attest before God, this 23d day of July, 1762.
PETER CALAS.”
As Peter was going out of the town, he was met by one of the abbés with a converting spirit, who made him return back to Toulouse, where he was shut up in a convent of Dominicans, and there compelled to perform all the functions of a convert to the Catholic religion; this was in part what his persecutors aimed at, it was the price of his father’s blood, and due atonement now seemed to be made to the religion of which they looked on themselves as the avengers.
The daughters were next taken from their mother, and shut up in a convent. This unhappy woman, who had been, as it were, sprinkled with the blood of her husband, who had held her eldest son lifeless within her arms, had seen the other banished, her daughters taken from her, herself stripped of her effects, and left alone in the wide world destitute of bread, and bereft of hopes, was almost weighed down to the grave with the excess of her misfortunes. Some certain persons, who had maturely weighed all the circumstances of this horrible adventure, were so struck with them that they pressed Mrs. Calas, who now led a life of retirement and solitude, to exert herself, and go and demand justice at the foot of the throne. At this time she was scarcely able to drag about the remains of a miserable life; besides, having been born in England and brought over to a distant province in France when very young, the very name of the city of Paris frightened her. She imagined that in the capital of the kingdom they must be still more cruel than in Toulouse; at length, however, the duty of revenging the death of her husband got the better of her weakness. She set out for Paris, arrived there half dead, and was surprised to find herself received with tenderness, sympathy, and offers of assistance.
In Paris reason always triumphs over enthusiasm, however great, whereas in the more distant provinces of the kingdom, enthusiasm almost always triumphs over reason.
M. de Beaumont, a famous lawyer of the Parliament of Paris, immediately took her cause in hand, and drew up an opinion, which was signed by fifteen other lawyers. M. Loiseau, equally famous for his eloquence, likewise drew up a memorial in favor of this unhappy family; and M. Mariette, solicitor to the council, drew up a formal statement of the case, which struck every one who read it with conviction.