Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/319

Rh Marquis Beccaria; but those who made the laws were not geometricians.

I hate the laws of Draco, which punish equally crimes and faults, wickedness and folly. Let us—especially in all litigations, in all dissensions, in all quarrels—distinguish the aggressor from the party offended, the oppressor from the oppressed. An offensive war is the procedure of a tyrant; he who defends himself is in the character of a just man.

As I was absorbed in these reflections, the Man of Forty Crowns came to me all in tears. I asked, with emotion, if his son, who was by right to live twenty-three years, was dead?

"No," said he, "the little one is very well, and so is my wife; but I was summoned to give evidence against a miller, who has been put to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, and who has been found innocent. I saw him faint away under redoubled tortures. I heard the crash of his bones. His outcries and screams of agony are not yet out of my ears; they haunt me. I shed tears for pity, and shudder with horror.

His tears drew mine. I trembled, too, like him, for I have naturally an extreme sensibility.

My memory then represented to me the dreadful fate of the Calas family: A virtuous mother in irons—her children in tears, and forced to fly—her house given up to pillage—a respectable father of a family broken with torture agonizing on a wheel,