- land, and Voltaire heard of the case. He soon saw
that behind it lay the thing he hated most in the world, namely, religious intolerance. He set to work with an energy and perseverance which were quite extraordinary. He left off his usual literary work; he examined evidence, drew up reports, wrote statements and narratives, collected a fund, composed pamphlets, wrote to influential people, and devoted his whole time and thoughts and much money to the cause he had undertaken. He succeeded in getting a new trial, and at last, three years after the savage sentence had been passed on Callas, a unanimous verdict of complete innocence was recorded by a council of forty judges. The whole of Europe had heard of the case, because it was Voltaire who had taken up the cause of the poor and honest man who had been the victim of a vile plot. Nothing in his life gave him more satisfaction than his success in this affair. Thirteen years later an old woman in Paris, in reply to some one who asked who the little old man was whom crowds surrounded, said, "It is the saviour of Callas." No honor that ever came to Voltaire gave him so much pleasure as that simple answer.
Nor was the case of Callas the only one in which he took an active interest. A man called Sirven was persecuted in much the same way, and would have suffered a similar fate had he not escaped. It took nine years for justice to be done this time, and Voltaire was seventy-seven when the case was retried and
