"During more than thirty years," says one of his biographers, "he had no dwelling-place but grottoes, hovels, and cabins, whither men went to draw him like a ferocious beast.

He lived a long while in a hiding-place, which one of his faithful guides had contrived for him under a heap of stones and blackberry bushes.

It was discovered by a shepherd; and such was the wretchedness of his condition, that, when forced to abandon it, he regretted that asylum, more fitted for wild beasts than for men." The hulks were still full of the audience of Paul Rabaut, and Protestant women were still languishing in the unwholesome dungeon of the Tower of Constance, when the execution of the unhappy Calas, accused of having killed his son, and the generous indignation of Voltaire cast a momentary gleam of light within the sombre region of prisons and gibbets.

For the first time, public opinion, at white heat, was brought to bear upon the decision of the persecutors.

Calas was dead, but the decree of the Parliament of Toulouse which had sentenced him, was quashed by act of the council: his memory was cleared, and the day of toleration for French Protestants began to glimmer, pending the full dawn of justice and liberty.
We have gone over in succession, and without break, the last cruel sufferings of the French Protestants; we now turn away our eyes with a feeling of relief mingled with respect and pride; we leave the free air of the desert to return to the rakes and effeminates of Louis XV.'s court.