His shirt was unruffled, his hair was neatly combed, and he had no wound or mark on the body. Marc Antoine disappeared, and when young Lavaisse was ready to go, and he and Pierre Calas had gone down-stairs, they found, near the shop below, Marc Antoine in his shirt, hanging from a door, his coat folded under the counter. After supper they withdrew to a small room. The father, mother, Marc Antoine, the elder son, and Pierre, the second son, were present. He happened to sup with the Calas family. A personal friend and friend of the family, named Lavaisse, a young man of nineteen, well known for his candid and kindly ways, the son of a distinguished lawyer at Toulouse, had come from Bordeaux on the previous day, October 12, 1761. Having one day lost his money in gambling, he determined to carry out his plan on that very day. He strengthened his resolution by reading all that has ever been written on suicide. This young man, failing to enter the commercial world, for which he was unfitted, or the legal world, because he could not obtain the necessary certificate that he was a Catholic, determined to end his life, and informed a friend of his intention. He was regarded as of a restless, sombre, and violent character. One of the sons of Jean Calas, named Marc Antoine, was a man of letters. He seemed to be so far removed from the absurd fanaticism that breaks the bonds of society that he had approved the conversion of his son, and had had in his service for thirty years a zealous Catholic woman, who had reared all his children. He was a Protestant, as were also his wife and family, except one son, who had abjured the heresy, and was in receipt of a small allowance from his father. Jean Calas, a man of sixty-eight years, had been engaged in commerce at Toulouse for more than forty years, and was recognised by all who knew him as a good father. The question was, Whether a father and mother had strangled their son to please God, a brother had strangled his brother, and a friend had strangled his friend or whether the judges had incurred the reproach of breaking on the wheel an innocent father, or of sparing a guilty mother, brother, and friend. In this strange incident we have to deal with religion, suicide, and parricide.
They see that no man's life is safe before a court that has been set up to guard the welfare of citizens, and every voice is raised in a demand of vengeance. But when an innocent father is given into the hands of error, of passion, or of fanaticism when the accused has no defence but his virtue when those who dispose of his life run no risk but that of making a mistake when they can slay with impunity by a legal decree-then the voice of the general public is heard, and each fears for himself. When the risk and the advantage are equal astonishment ceases, and even pity is enfeebled. It is the inevitable fate of war those who die by the sword might themselves have inflicted death on their enemies, and did not die without the means of defending themselves. We quickly forget the long list of the dead who have perished in our battles. The murder of Calas, which was perpetrated with the sword of justice at Toulouse on March 9, 1762, is one of the most singular events that deserve the attention of our own and of later ages. Treatise on Tolerance, by Voltaire Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire (1763) Short Account of the Death of Jean Calas
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