I do not understand how thinking beings can remain in a country where monkeys so often turn to tigers. I am ashamed to live even on the frontier. This, indeed, is the moment to break all ties and carry elsewhere the horror with which I am filled. What! at Abbeville, monsters in the guise of judges, sentence a child of sixteen to perish by the most frightful death--their judgment is confirmed--and the nation bears it! Is this the country of philosophy and luxury? It is that of St. Bartholomew. The inquisition had not dared to put in execution what these Jansenist judges have perpetrated." Voltaire's horror could not save the victim, for the evil was committed before the news of the trial reached him. The populace, it is true, even before the execution of the victims, returned to their senses, and Belleval was held in such execration that he was forced to fly from Abbeville, to avoid being torn to pieces. But the king and parliament of Paris refused to repair their fault towards the survivors. Voltaire did what he could. He recommended one of the victims who had fled, the chevalier d'Etallonde, to the king of Prussia, whose service he entered; and he endeavoured to open the eyes of government to the justice and propriety of repairing its crime. But the duke de Choiseul feared to act, and the parliament of Paris was a bigoted and intolerant body. To his honour, we find that he was unwearied in his endeavours. When Louis XVI. succeeded to the crown, and a milder reign commenced, he renewed his exertions. D'Etallonde had, from good conduct, been promoted in the Prussian army. He invited him to Ferney, and endeavoured to interest the ministers of Louis in his favour, and to prevail on them to revoke his sentence: in vain; the government had not sufficient justice to avoid a fault, nor humanity to desire to repair it.