Voltaire wrote to Cardinal Bernis, "Might I venture to entreat your eminence to be kind enough to tell me what I am to think about the frightful case of this Calas, broken on the wheel at Toulouse, on a charge of having hanged his own son?
The fact is, they maintain here that he is quite innocent, and that he called God to witness it.

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This case touches me to the heart; it saddens my pleasures, it taints them.