One day, to his extreme surprise, Fabre received from the Duc de Choiseul a packet containing a drama, in which he found his own history related in verse, by Fenouillot de Falbaire. It was entitled "The Honest Criminal." Fabre had never been a criminal, except in worshipping God according to his conscience, though that had for nearly a hundred years been pronounced a crime by the law of France. The piece, which was of no great merit as a tragedy, was at first played before the Duchesse de Villeroy and her friends, with great applause, Mdlle. Clairon playing the principal female part. Saint-Florentin prohibited the playing of the piece in public, protesting to the last against the work and the author. Voltaire played it at Ferney, and Queen Marie Antoinette had it played in her presence at Versailles. It was not until 1789 that the piece was played in the theatres of Paris, when it had a considerable success. We do not find that any Protestants were sent to be galley-slaves after 1762, the year that Calas was executed. A reaction against this barbarous method of treating men for differences of opinion seems to have set in; or, perhaps, it was because most men were ceasing to believe in the miraculous powers of the priests, for which the Protestants had so long been hanged and made galley-slaves. After the liberation of Fabre in 1762, other galley-slaves were liberated from time to time. Thus, in the same year, Jean Albiges and Jean Barran were liberated after eight years of convict life. They had been condemned for assisting at Protestant assemblies. Next year, Maurice was liberated; he had been condemned for life for the same reason. While Voltaire had been engaged in the case of Calas he asked the Duc de Choiseul for the liberation of a galley-slave. The man for whom he interceded, had been a convict twenty years for attending a Protestant meeting. Of course, Voltaire cared nothing for his religion, believing Catholicism and Protestantism to be only two forms of the same superstition. The name of this galley-slave was Claude Chaumont. Like nearly all the other convicts he was a working man--a little dark-faced shoemaker. Some Protestant friends he had at Geneva interceded with Voltaire for his liberation. On Chaumont's release in 1764, he waited upon his deliverer to thank him. "What!" said Voltaire, on first seeing him, "my poor little bit of a man, have they put _you_ in the galleys? What could they have done with you? The idea of sending a little creature to the galley-chain, for no other crime than that of praying to God in bad French!"[80] Voltaire ended by handing the impoverished fellow a sum of money to set him up in the world again, when he left the house the happiest of men. [Footnote 80: "Voltaire et les Genevois," par J. Gaberel, 74-5.]