Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/321

Rh creatures and Providence, to compose for them, by artifice, a happiness which Providence seems otherwise to have refused to them by any other means.

"What magistrate was ever so careless of his responsibilities and duties to humanity as to entertain such ideas? Could he, in the solitude of his closet, without shuddering with horror and pity, cast his eyes on those papers, the unfortunate monuments of guilt or of innocence? Should he not think he hears a plaintive voice and groans issue from those fatal writings, and press him to decide the destiny of a subject, of a husband, of a father, or of a whole family? What judge can be so unmerciful (if he is charged with but one single process) as to pass in cold blood before the door of a prison? Is it I (must he say to himself) who detain in that execrable place my fellow creature, perhaps my countryman, one of humankind, in short? Is it I that confine him every day—that shut those execrable doors upon him? Perhaps despair will have seized him. He sends up to heaven my name loaded with his curses, and doubtless calls to witness against me that great judge of the world who observes us and will judge us both.

"Here a dreadful sight presents itself on a sudden to my eyes: The judge, tired with interrogating by words, has recourse to interrogation by tortures. Impatient in his inquiries and researches, and perhaps irritated at their inutility, he has brought to him torches, chains, levers, and all those instruments