Never did any scene appear to me more amusing and refreshing.

'What,' said he, 'my poor, little, good fellow, they sent you to the galleys! What did they mean to do with you?
What a conscience they must have to put in fetters and chain to the oar a man who had committed no crime beyond praying to God in bad French!' He turned several times to me, denouncing persecution.

He summoned into his room some persons who were staying with him, that they might share the joy he felt at seeing poor little Chaumont, who, though perfectly well attired for his condition, was quite astonished to find himself so well received.

There was nobody, down to an ex-Jesuit, Father Adam, who did not come forward to congratulate him." Innate love of justice and horror of fanaticism had inspired Voltaire with his zeal on behalf of persecuted Protestants; a more personal feeling, a more profound sympathy, caused his grief and his dread when Chevalier de la Barre, accused of having mutilated a crucifix, was condemned, in 1766, to capital punishment; the scepticism of the eighteenth century had sudden and terrible reactions towards fanatical violence, as a protest and a pitiable struggle against the doubt which was invading it on all sides; the chevalier was executed; he was not twenty years old.

He was an infidel and a libertine, like the majority of the young men of his day and of his age; the crime he expiated so cruelly was attributed to reading bad books, which had corrupted him.
"I am told," writes Voltaire to D'Alembert, "that they said at their examination that they had been led on to the act of madness they committed by the works of the _Encyclopaedists_.