VOLTAIRE. 113 



the mother and brothers of the deceased, all of whom 

 must have concurred in the diabolical act. The father 

 had for some time, beside his age of sixty-nine, been 

 reduced to great weakness by a paralytic complaint. 

 The deceased was one of the most powerful men in 

 the country, and nearly six feet high. He was also of 

 dissolute habits, involved in pecuniary difficulties, and 

 possessing and fond of reading books that defended 

 suicide. Finally, it was certainly known that the notion 

 of his wishing to become a Catholic was a pure fiction, 

 and that he had never given the least intimation of such 

 a desire. In the face of all this, amounting to proof of 

 the magistrate's fancy being an absolute impossibility, he 

 ordered the whole family to be cast into prison together 

 with the father, as accomplices in the supposed murder. 

 The populace immediately took up the subject thus sug- 

 gested to them by authority, and considered the deceased 

 as a martyr. The brotherhood of the White Penitents 

 (Voltaire says at the desire of the magistrate) cele- 

 brated a mass for his soul, exhibiting his figure with 

 a palm-branch in one hand as the emblem of martyr- 

 dom, and a pen in the other, the instrument where- 

 with, as was represented, he intended to have signed his 

 recantation of Calvinism. A report was industriously 

 spread abroad that the Protestants regard the murder 

 of children by their parents as a duty when they are 

 minded to abjure the reformed faith ; but that, for the 

 sake of greater certainty, and to prevent the escape of the 

 convert, the sect assembles in a secret place, and elects 

 at stated times a public executioner to perform this 

 office. The court before whom the case was brought, 



I 



