116 VOLTAIRE. 



mitted a crime. The country never forgot it. When, 

 during the last days of his life, in the spring of 1778, 

 he was one day on the Pont Royal, and some person 

 asked the name of " that man whom the crowd 

 followed?" " Ne savez vous pas" (answered a common 

 woman) " (jue c'est le sauveur des Galas ?" It is said 

 that he was more touched with this simple tribute to 

 his fame than with all the adoration they lavished 

 upon him.* 



About, the same time with this memorable event of 

 Galas, there was an attempt made by the same fana- 

 tical party in Languedoc to charge a respectable 

 couple, of the name of Sirven, with the murder of 

 their daughter, a young woman who had been con- 

 fined in a monastery, under a lettre de cachet, obtained 

 by the priests, and, having suffered from cruel treatment, 

 and made her escape, was found in a well drowned. 

 Sirven and his wife escaped upon hearing of the 

 charge : he was sentenced to death par contumace ; 

 she died upon the journey, and he took refuge in 

 Geneva. Voltaire exerted himself as before ; and 

 though it was necessary that the party should expose 

 himself to the risk of an unjust condemnation by 

 appearing to answer the accusation in the Court of 



* Some unreflecting person has lately been endeavouring to 

 reverse the public judgment in favour of Galas and of Voltaire, by 

 examining the records of the Courts in Languedoc ; and has pub- 

 lished an assertion, that the original sentence on Galas was right. 

 "Was any one silly enough to suppose that these Courts would pre- 

 serve any evidence of their own delinquency ? 



