Chapter 26 Twenty-five Voltaire

In our day and age we so often hear of the nefarious efforts of the news ad man, and many good people accuse "propaganda" of being a successful invention of the modern devil, a novel and clumsy way of drawing attention to a person or a cause.But such accusations are commonplace."Propaganda" is generally considered to be a relatively recent invention.But when past events are viewed without prejudice, the opposite is found. Old Testament prophets, big and small, were once masters at capturing the attention of ordinary people.In journalism parlance, the history of Greece and Rome is one long, uninterrupted "publicity stunt."Some publicity is decent.But most of it was glitzy, sleazy propaganda that even Broadway now refuses to print.

Reformers like Luther and Calvin fully understood the great value of well-placed advertisements.We cannot blame them.They cannot be like red chrysanthemums, as long as they grow humbly and happily by the roadside.They are very serious.They want to get their point across.How can you be successful without attracting a huge following? A certain Thomas of the Kempis lived for eighty full years in a quiet corner of a monastery, a long period of voluntary exile which, if advertised in time (as it is), had profound moral consequences, and curiosity would drive It would sell well for people to read the book of his prayers and reflections all his life.But a Francis or a Loyola of Assis who wishes to live to see their labors really pay off must do whatever it takes to use the methods now so often associated with circuses or movie starlets.

Christianity places great emphasis on humility and praises those who are humble in spirit.But the sermons in praise of these virtues are now a topic of conversation only because of the particular method in which they were preached. No wonder that the men and women who have been condemned as the sworn enemies of the Church, in their struggle against the spiritual tyranny of the Western world, have taken a page from the Bible and employed a rather peculiar method of propaganda. I offer this insignificant explanation because Voltaire, the greatest of all scholars who was prolific in propaganda, was often attacked for his sometimes unscrupulous exploitation of the emptiness in people's minds.Perhaps his methods were not always so brilliant, but those who were saved through him may not see it that way.

Furthermore, just as pudding is tested by tasting, the success or failure of a man like Voltaire should also be judged by what he did for his fellow men, not by his favorite clothes, jokes, etc. Or paste wallpaper. One day this strange man suddenly felt that he was very great, so he said, "What does it matter if I don't have royal power? I have a pen." He was right.He has a pen.He has many pens.He is the natural enemy of geese, for he uses more quills than twenty-odd average writers.He was one of those literary giants who, all alone, wrote as many articles under the most dire adversity as all the writers in the Writers Guild put together.He sat at his desk in a squalid country inn.He composed countless hexameters in his cold and lonely country room.His manuscript paper covered the cracked floor of his boarding house in Greenwich.He spattered ink on the carpets of the royal residence of Prussia, and used a lot of personal letterhead bearing the name of the governor of the Bastille.When he was still playing hoops and pinball, Ninon de Lancros gave him a handsome allowance to "buy some books" and eighty years later in the same In Paris, we heard him talk about buying a spread and loose coffee in order to finish another book before the inescapable sleep of death.

The tragedies, stories, poems, philosophical and physical treatises he wrote do not require a whole chapter in this book to review them.His sonnets were no better than dozens of poets of his time.As a historian his sources were unreliable and dull, and his scientific explorations were only of the sort we read in the Sunday papers. But he was a stupid, narrow-minded, obstinate and cruel enemy, and his influence lasted until the war of 1914 because of his bravery and strength. Voltaire lived in a time of extremes.On the one hand is an extremely selfish and corrupt outdated religious, social and economic system, and on the other is a large group of active but overzealous young men and women who want to make peace and prosperity, but have no practical basis, just good intentions That's all.He is the unspectacular notary's son, sickly, and wry fate throws him into a maelstrom of sharks and tadpoles, where he either drowns or swims out.He was willing to swim out and wash ashore.His methods of perpetually battling adversity are often suspect.He begs, flatters, plays the part of the buffoon.But that was before he was royalty free and a literary giant.Let the first stone be thrown by this author who has never made a rough job just to make ends meet!

This is not to say that Voltaire fretted over a few extra bricks.In his long and busy life, he had devoted himself to the fight against stupidity and suffered so many defeats that he didn't care about being beaten in public or being thrown a banana peel.But he was an indomitable, hopeful optimist.If he spends his days in His Majesty's prison today, he may find tomorrow a prestigious office in the same court which drove him out.If he had been forced to listen to angry country priests calling him an enemy of Christianity all his life, who knew that in some corner of the cupboard full of love letters, there might be a gift from the Pope. A beautiful medal to prove that he can be criticized by the church as well as approved by the church.

This is no surprise. He savored the joys of the world to his heart's content, and lived a strange and colorful life year after year and day after day. Voltaire was of the middle class in blood.His father, for lack of a proper title, could be described as a private trust company type.He worked for many rich and noble confidants, and took care of their legal and financial interests. Therefore, the young Yaruai (because this was his family name) was used to contacting a class that was slightly better off than his own family. His life gave him an advantage over most of his literary opponents, and his mother was a Miss de Aumard.She was a poor girl who brought her husband no dowry.But her surname has a little "de" in front of it, which is held in awe by all middle-class France (and Europeans in general, and not a few Americans in particular), and her husband finds it quite a reward. lucky.Her son was also immersed in the glory brought to him by his ancestors who were named nobles. As soon as he started writing, he changed the Francis Marie de Yarouai, who had a commoner color, to the more aristocratic Francis Marie de Yarouai. Voltaire, but how and where he changed his surname is a mystery.He has a brother and a sister.Voltaire was very fond of his sister and she took care of him after his mother died.His brother was a faithful Jansenist priest, very warm and upright, but Voltaire hated him, which was one reason he tried not to live under his father's name.

Father Yaruai is no fool, and he soon discovers that his youngest son is a loser.To this end he sent his son to the Jesuits, hoping that he would become a master of Latin sextameters and Spartan self-discipline.The pious priests did their best to enlighten him, giving this slender student a solid foundational training in dead and living languages.But they found it impossible to eradicate that boy's certain "queer" talent which had distinguished him from the other pupils from the very beginning. When Voltaire was sixteen, the clergy were more than happy to let him leave the Jesuits.To win his father's favor, young Francis began studying law.Unfortunately, one cannot read a book all day with one's eyes closed and one's ears closed.There are many idle hours in the evening.To pass the time, Voltaire was either writing funny little stories for the local paper or reading his latest literary work to close friends in a nearby coffee shop.Two centuries ago, living this kind of life was generally considered hell.Yaruai, the father, was fully aware of the danger his son was taking.He turned to an influential friend to secure a secretaryship for Francis at the French embassy in The Hague.The Dutch capital, then as now, was eerily monotonous.With nothing else to do, Voltaire begins an affair with a girl who is not particularly pretty.The girl's mother was a society reporter, a formidable woman.The lady, desiring to marry her daughter to a more promising partisan, hastened to the French ambassador, and besought him to drive away this dangerous Romeo, before the whole city knew of the scandal.The ambassador himself is already in trouble, and he doesn't want to make trouble.He hurried his secretary onto the next stagecoach to Paris, and Francis was out of work and once again at the mercy of his father.

In this urgent moment, Yarouai thought of an expedient measure, which is often used by Frenchmen who have friends working in court.He asked for and got a "letter with the king's seal," which he placed before his son, telling him either to go to a mandatory vacant prison, or to write an application to study hard at law school.The son said that he chose the latter way out, and promised to be a model of diligence and hard work.He kept his word, and devoted himself to the happy life of free pamphlet creation, an industry which made the whole town talk about it.This, of course, was not to the father's liking, and he decided to use his paternal rights to drive his son away from the pleasure-seeking places of the Seine, and let him live for a year with a friend in the country.

In the country, with twenty-four hours of leisure every day (including Sundays), Voltaire began to study literature very seriously and wrote his first plays.After twelve months of clean air and rewarding monotony, he was allowed to return to the idyllic capital, where he immediately made up for lost time with a series of satires on the Regent.In fact, there was nothing too much to scold that mean old fellow, but he didn't like Voltaire's publicity for him at all.Subsequent articles provoked a second exile, and finally had to spend some time in the Bastille.But the prisons of those days, that is to say prisons for young gentlemen of such social importance as Voltaire, were not bad places.Prisoners are not allowed to leave their rooms without authorization, but they are free to do their own thing.This is exactly what Voltaire needed.A lonely cell in the heart of Paris gave him the chance to do some serious work.When he was released he had written several plays, all of which were very successful, one of which ran for forty-five nights, breaking all eighteenth-century records.

This not only made him a fortune (he needed it badly), but also earned him a reputation as a wit, which was most unfortunate for a young man who still had to fight for his future, because from then on people put him in the He was blamed for any joke on the boulevard or in a café that won popularity within hours.Incidentally, this is why he came to the UK to study a postgraduate course for Liberal politicians. In 1725, Voltaire made (or failed to make) a few jokes about the ancient and useless family of Rohan, and the knight of Rohan felt his pride shattered and must take revenge.Of course it was impossible for a descendant of an ancient ruler to fight a duel with the son of a notary, and the knight entrusted revenge to his squires. One evening Voltaire was dining with one of his father's patrons, the Duke of Surrey, when he was told that someone was looking for him outside.When he reached the door, he was severely beaten by Ser Rohan's squires.The next day the story spread like wildfire around town.Voltaire, at his best dressed, looked like an ugly little monkey in the cartoons.With his bruised nose and his head covered in bandages, he was the perfect subject of comment.Only a very decisive measure could save him from being discredited at the hands of the funny papers.As soon as the raw steak in his belly gave him a boost, Monsieur Voltaire sent his witness to the knight of Rohan, and then began nervous fencing exercises for a desperate duel. Alas, on the morning of the Great War, Voltaire found himself sent to prison again.Rohan, a real scoundrel, turned the duel over to the police, and the dueling warrior was detained until he was given a ticket to England.Voltaire was sent off to the northwest, and told that he would not be allowed to return to France unless an invitation was issued by His Majesty's gendarme. For four full years Voltaire lived in and around London.The Kingdom of Britain is not really a paradise, but compared with France, it still looks like a paradise. The royal guillotine casts a shadow over the land.January 30th, 1649, was a date that no one in any important position will ever forget.What happened to the dead King Charles can happen to anyone who had the audacity to put himself above the law.As for the state religion, of course the official church enjoys some kind of power and favorable treatment, but people who like to worship elsewhere can also live in peace, and the direct influence of religious clergy on state affairs is almost negligible compared to France .Admitted atheists and some obnoxious Nonconformists might occasionally be rewarded with a visit to the prison, but the general conditions of life in England were perfect for the subjects of Louis XV. In 1729 Voltaire returned to France, and although he was allowed to live in Paris, he made little use of the privilege.He was like a frightened animal willing to accept a piece of sugar from a friend, but always alert and ready to flee at the slightest sign of danger.He works hard.He wrote a large number of works, regardless of time and fact, he chose the topic himself, from Lima and Peru to Russia and Moscow, wrote a series of historical dramas, tragedies and comedies that are knowledgeable and easy to understand.At the age of forty, he was already a unique writer at that time. Another event exposed Voltaire to a different civilization. In faraway Prussia, the good King Frederick yawned loudly in his rustic courtyard surrounded by a crowd of bumpkins, trying to find some company that would make him happy.He admired Voltaire very much and had been trying to invite Voltaire to Berlin for many years.But for the French in 1750, such an emigration was tantamount to moving to uninhabited Virginia. Frederick repeatedly raised his payment, and Voltaire accepted the invitation. He came to Berlin, and the contradictions began.The King of Prussia and the French dramatist were both incurable individualists, and could not live in harmony under the same roof without bitterness.After two years of contention, an insignificant quarrel drove Voltaire back to what he liked to call "civilization." But Voltaire learned a salutary lesson.Perhaps he was right that French poetry written by the King of Prussia was really bad.But His Majesty's attitude to religious liberty is beyond reproach, and that is what deserves more credit for him than any other monarch in Europe. Returning to his native land at nearly sixty, Voltaire was in no mood for the harsh sentences by which the French courts maintain their order and admit no harsh words of defiance.The reluctance of man to take advantage of the light of divine wisdom which God bestowed on His greatest product on the sixth day of Genesis annoyed Voltaire all his life.He (Voltaire) hated all forms and shapes of stupidity.He took out most of his rage on those "evil enemies" who, like the statesmen of ancient Rome, always threatened to destroy it.This "evil enemy" is nothing but "everyone".They refuse to think as long as they have something to eat and drink and a place to rest. From his childhood Voltaire had felt himself driven by a gigantic machine which, by a force which seemed wholly lifeless, united cruelty and obstinacy.Destroying, or at least knocking over, the thing had become an old reverie of his.The French government did no wrong to this particular devil, and did Voltaire a great favor by creating a whole host of legal scandals in the world. The first happened in 1761. In the city of Toulouse in the south of France lived a shopkeeper named Jean Callas, a Protestant.Toulouse has always been a devout city.Protestants there were not allowed to hold public office, nor to be doctors, lawyers, booksellers, or midwives.Protestant servants are not allowed in Catholic homes.Every year on August 23rd and 24th, all residents commemorate the massacre of St. Bartholomew, which killed Protestants, with a grand feast of praise and thanksgiving. Despite the unfavorable environment, Callas lived in harmony with his neighbors all his life.One of his sons had converted to Catholicism, but the father remained very kind to his son, telling people that, as far as he was concerned, he could let the children choose their favorite religion. But there was a scandal that should not be publicized in the Jean family, and that was about his eldest son, Mike Anthony.Mike is an unfortunate man.He wanted to be a lawyer, but the profession was closed to Protestants.He was a devout Calvinist and refused to change his creed.The ideological struggle made him suffer from depression, and finally the illness deeply damaged the young man's mind.He began reciting Hamlet's famous Alone to his parents.He took long walks alone and often spoke to friends about the benefits of suicide. After some time in this way, one evening, while the family were entertaining a friend, the poor child quietly went away, went to his father's store-room, took a bundle of rope, and hanged himself from the beam over the gate-post. His father found him hours later, his smock and shirt neatly folded over his shoes. The family is desperate.Those who committed suicide were then dragged face down naked through the streets of the city, then tied to the gallows outside the gates, and let the birds eat up the body. The Callas family is a person of status, and they are not reconciled to such a shame and humiliation.They were standing in a circle discussing what should be done and what they were planning to do when a neighbor heard the confusion and called the police.The scandal spread quickly, and the street was filled with angry crowds, who shouted for Callas Sr. to be executed, "because he killed his son to keep him from becoming a Catholic." In the small towns there is no shortage of wonders, and in the French countryside of the eighteenth century, when boredom weighs heavily on people like a black funeral coffin, the most ignorant and bizarre stories are believed to be a relief. Breathe a sigh of relief. Senior officials knew exactly what to do in such suspicious circumstances, and they promptly arrested the Callas family, guests, servants, and anyone who had recently been in or near the Callas home.They sent the prisoners to the town hall, shackled them, threw them into the dungeons for persistent enemies, and examined them the next day.Everyone told the same story, how Mike Anthony had entered the house without making a fuss, how he had left the room, how they thought he had gone for a walk alone, and so on. But at this time the priests of Toulouse also participated in this matter, and with their help, the terrible news spread: this Huguenot killed his son because he wanted to establish a true faith, He became bloodthirsty and killed his son because he wanted to return to the true faith. People familiar with modern detection methods would think that the authorities must use the findings of the day's investigation of the murder scene.People knew that Marc Anthony was strong and strong, he was twenty-eight, his father was sixty-three.The chances of his father hanging him easily from the doorpost without any struggle were slim to none.But none of the town council members bothered with such trivial details.They were busy collecting the body of the victim, for the suicide of McAnthony is now considered worthy of the treatment of a martyr, and the body lay in the auditorium for three weeks, buried with the greatest ceremonies by penitents in white .For some inexplicable reason they took the dead Calvinist as a member of their own order, and ceremoniously sent his embalmed body to the cathedral, usually for the bishop or the wealthiest patron of the place Ritual of adoption. During these three weeks, after every pulpit in the city repeatedly urged the pious people of Toulouse to give evidence against Jean Callas and their family, at last the popular press dumped the case altogether, and the trial ended in Mark's suicide. It started five months later. At that time, an inquisitor had an idea and proposed to go to the old man's shop to see if the suicide he described was possible, but he was overwhelmed by twelve votes to one. tear him apart. They took Karas to the torture room and hung him with his feet a meter above the ground, and then pulled his limbs until he was "dislocated" (I'm copying from an official report).Because he refused to admit to a crime he had never committed, he was released again, given a lot of water, and after a while his body "twice its original size."Still denying his crime, he was carried back to the death cart and sent to the executioner to tear his arms and legs apart.During the next two hours, as he lay disheartened on the anvil, magistrates and priests continued to harass him with questions, and the old man, with incredible courage, continued to plead his innocence.Inflamed by this stubborn lie, the Chief Executive dropped the hopeless case and ordered him to be hanged. At this time, everyone's anger had subsided, and no one in his family was executed.Callas' widow was deprived of all her property and allowed to live in seclusion, starving, and accompanied by loyal servants.All the children were sent to the convent, but the youngest, who was studying at Nîmes when his brother committed suicide, wisely escaped to Geneva. This case has attracted the attention of many people.Voltaire, who lived at Ferney's castle (built just a few minutes from the Swiss border), heard the case, but at first he refused to investigate the cause.He had been at odds with the Calvinist priests of Switzerland, who also regarded the little private theater that stood in their own town as a blatantly provocative, devilish building.Thus, Voltaire wrote, in a state of superciliousness, that this so-called Protestant martyr could not arouse any enthusiasm in him, because if Catholicism was bad, the Huguenots insisted on rejecting his plays, all the more so. Bad!Besides, the twelve judges seemed so respectable to him (and to many others) that it was almost impossible for them to sentence an innocent man to death for no reason. The saint of Ferney was very hospitable to visitors, and a few days later a merchant arrived from Marseilles, who happened to be in Toulouse during the trial.He provided some first-hand information to Voltaire.Voltaire at last began to understand the horror of the crime that had been committed, and from then on he could not let go of the question. There are many kinds of courage, but first class merit should be reserved for those unparalleled men who, single-handedly, dared to face the whole society, and dared to speak out when the judgment was passed by the highest court and the whole society believed that the trial was lawful and just. justice. Voltaire clearly knew that if he dared to sue the legal but unjust death sentence of the Toulouse court, a big storm would come, and he prepared his lawsuit carefully like a professional lawyer.He visits the children of the Callas family who ran to Switzerland.He wrote to everyone who might know.He also hired advocates to examine and revise his conclusions, lest he lose his mind with rage and righteous indignation.Once his own grounds were secure, he began the battle. First, Voltaire pushed everyone of influence in France (he knew most of them) to write to the Secretary of State demanding that the Callas case be amended.Then he began to search for Callas' widow, and when he found her, he generously paid for her to be taken to Paris, where he hired one of the most famous lawyers to look after her.This woman's spirit has completely broken down.She prayed blankly to get her daughters out of the convent before she died.Beyond that, she had no hope. Voltaire then made contact with Callas' Catholic son, helped him escape from school, and sought him out in Geneva.Finally, he published all the facts in a pamphlet entitled "The Most Original Sources Concerning the Callas Family," which consisted of the letters of the survivors of the tragedy and which contained nothing about Voltaire himself. Later, during the revision of the case, Voltaire remained prudently in the background, but he successfully planned the propaganda campaign, and soon the Callas family's lawsuit became the concern of all families in all countries in Europe, thousands of people everywhere. Tens of thousands of people (including the King of England and the Tsar of Russia) donated money to help the accused. In the end Voltaire fought the hardest battle of his life and won. At that time, the notorious Louis XV occupied the French throne.Fortunately his mistress, who had a deep aversion to the Jesuits and everything they did, including the church, sided with Voltaire.But the king likes to put pleasure above all else, and it annoys him that people chatter about a dead obscure Protestant.Of course, as long as the king does not sign a new judgment, the minister will not dare to take action. As long as the minister does not act rashly, the Toulouse court will be safe.They thought they were powerful, and used high-handed tactics to keep Voltaire and his lawyers from the original documents of the judgment. During these terrible nine months Voltaire persevered in his agitation, and finally in March, 1765, the Chancellor ordered the court of Toulouse to surrender all records concerning the Callas case and proposed a new one. judgment.When the decision was made public, Jean Callas's widow, and the two daughters who were finally returned to her, came to Versailles.A year later, the special court commissioned to investigate the appeal ruled that Jean Callas had been executed for a crime he had not committed.After great effort, the king was persuaded to give Callas' widow and children a small sum of money.In addition, the magistrates who had dealt with the Callas case were dismissed, as a subtle hint to the people of Toulouse that such things must not be repeated. Although the French government can take a tactful attitude towards this matter, the French people have aroused anger in their hearts.Voltaire suddenly realized that this was not the only case of misjudgment, and that many innocent people like Callas had been tortured. In 1760 a Protestant squire near Toulouse entertained a visiting Calvinist priest in his home.As this was a monstrous crime, he was dispossessed and sentenced to rowing.He must have been a very strong man, because he was still alive after thirteen years.Voltaire was told of his plight.Voltaire resumed the work, and took the unfortunate man off the ship and sent him to Switzerland, where his wife and children lived on government handouts.Voltaire looked after the family until the government returned some of their confiscated property and allowed them to return to their deserted home. Next came the case of Chaumont, the poor fellow who had been caught attending a Protestant fair, and for this charge he was sent to a ship for lifeless rowing, but after Voltaire's intercession, He was released. These cases, however, are but a trifle in relation to what follows. The location is again in the ravaged Languedoc of France, after the extermination of the Albi and Waldo pagans, what remains is a wilderness of ignorance and prejudice. In a village near Toulouse lived an old Protestant named Severn, a very respectable old Protestant, who lived by studying the laws of the Middle Ages, when the feudal justice system had become so complicated that even An ordinary lease is as profitable as an income tax return. Servin has three daughters.The youngest is a fool who never gets into trouble, and loves to think about it.In March 1764 she left home.The parents searched and heard nothing, and a few days later the district bishop told Servin that his daughter had visited him and offered to become a nun, and that she was now in a convent. Hundreds of years of persecution have completely broken the Protestant spirit in this part of France.Serwin respectfully replies that in this bad world everything has its rewards, and meekly accepts the inevitable.But in the abnormal atmosphere of the monastery, the poor child soon lost the last of her sanity, and when she began to be tiresome, she was sent home.At that time, she was very depressed, surrounded by scary voices and demons, and her parents were worried about her life.It wasn't long before she disappeared again.two weeks later.They fished her out of an old well. At the time when the case of Jean Callas was on trial, the rumors and slanders against the Protestants were believed.The Servins remember what happened to the innocent Gene Callas and decide not to repeat it.They fled, and one of his young grandsons froze to death during the horrific journey through the Alps, which ended in Switzerland.But they were a little late.A few months later, the parents were found guilty of killing their own children (in absentia) and ordered to hang them.Daughters were sentenced to witness their parents' death and then exiled for life. A friend of Rousseau brought the case to Voltaire, and as soon as he had dealt with Callas he turned to the suit against the Servins.At this time, Sewen's wife was dead, and the remaining task was to defend her husband.Voltaire spent seven full years doing this work.The Toulouse court again refused to provide any evidence, and Voltaire had to start propaganda again, asking for donations from Frederick of Prussia, Kesselring of Russia, and Poniatowski of Poland until the king was forced to pay attention to the matter. so far.Finally, in Voltaire's seventy-eighth year, in the eighth year of his relentless appeal, Servin was acquitted, and the survivors were allowed to return home. Thus ended the second case. A third case followed. In August 1765, in the town of Abbeville not far from Amiens, two crosses standing on the side of the road were broken by someone.Three boys were suspected of sacrilege, and their arrest was ordered.One of them escaped to Prussia, the remaining two were captured.Of the two men, the older, the Knight of Baal, was suspected of being an atheist.It is very doubtful that one finds among his piles a "Dictionary of Philosophy," in which all the masters of free thought are collected.The judges decided to investigate the young man's past.They searched for evidence that could tie him to the Abbeville case.Didn't he kneel down and take off his hat when a religious procession passed by? Barr replied yes, but he was busy catching a stagecoach at the time and didn't mean to be offensive. The judge tortured him, and, being young and unable to endure pain like old Callas, he confessed to destroying one of the crosses, so that because he was "impious, he deliberately did not kneel before the wafer, did not take off his hat, and sang blasphemous songs, Approval of profane books", and other offenses of disrespect of a similar nature, were punished with death. The cruelty of the sentence (his tongue was to be ripped out with red-hot iron, his right hand was to be chopped off, and he was to be slowly burned, and that happened only a century and a half ago!), provoked public disapproval.Even if he committed all the crimes listed in the detailed indictment, he could not use this brutal method to massacre a teenager!People petitioned the king, and ministers were surrounded by calls for reprieve.但是国家动荡不安，必须杀一儆百，巴尔受了和卡拉斯相同的折磨后，被送上断头台斩首了（这是对他的特别恩惠）。他的尸体，连同他的《哲学辞典》以及我们的老朋友拜勒的一些书，都在大庭广众之下被刽子手们付之一炬。 对于那些害怕索兹尼、斯宾诺莎和笛卡尔的不断增长的影响的人们来说，这倒是赏心悦目的一天。它表明，对于那些误入歧途的年轻人来说，如果背离正确与错误之间这条窄狭道路，追随一小撮激进的哲学家，这便是不可避免的结局。 伏尔泰听说后就接受了挑战。他已快过八十岁生日了，但他还是以过去的热情和充满正直怒火的头脑投入到这个案件中。 巴尔由于“亵渎”而被处死。伏尔泰首先要找出是否有这样一条法律，人们犯了假设的罪就能够被处死。他找不到这样一条法律，接着他又询问他的律师朋友们。他们也找不到这样的法律。人们渐渐地明白了，是法官们用他们邪恶的狂热“发明”了这样一个合法捏造，以便干掉犯人。 在处决巴尔的时候，到处都是不堪入耳的谣言。现在出现的这场风暴迫使法官们不得不审时度势，对第三个年轻犯人的审判从来没有得出结论。至于巴尔，他一直未能雪冤。复审案件拖拉了许多年，到伏尔泰去世的时候还没有结果。但是他打出的这一击已经开始奏效了，它即使不是为了宽容，至少也是为了反对不宽容。 由于爱搬弄是非的老妇人的煽动和腐朽法庭的判决而作出的种种可怖的行径到此结束了。 怀有宗教企图的法庭只有在黑暗中偷偷摸摸地行事才能成功。伏尔泰采取的这种进攻方法法庭是抵挡不住的。 伏尔泰打亮了所有的灯，雇用了庞大的乐队，邀请大家来参加，逼得敌人走投无路。 结果，敌人一筹莫展。