The law allowed the bishop to take the child of Protestants from their parents for the sake of its soul. This little girl was so taken and placed in a convent. She ran away and came back to her parents. Her poor little body was covered with the marks of the convent whip. "Suffer little children to come unto me." The child was out of her mind--suddenly she disappeared, and a few days after her little body was found in a well, three miles from home. The cry was raised that her folks had murdered her to keep her from becoming a Catholic. This happened only a little way from the Christian City of Toulouse while Jean Calas was in prison. The Sirvens knew that a trial would end in conviction. They fled. In their absence they were convicted, their property confiscated, the parents sentenced to die by the hangman, the daughters to be under the gallows during the execution of their mother, and then to be exiled. The family fled in the midst of winter; the married daughter gave birth to a child in the snows of the Alps; the mother died, and, at last reaching Switzerland, the father found himself without means of support. They went to Voltaire. He espoused their cause. He took care of them, gave them the means to live, and labored to annul the sentence that had been pronounced against them for nine long and weary years. He appealed to kings for money, to Catharine II. of Russia, and to hundreds of others. He was successful. He said of this case: The Sirvens were tried and condemned in two hours in January, 1762, and now in January, 1772, after ten years of effort, they have been restored to their rights. This was the work of Voltaire. Why should the worshipers of God hate the lovers of men? THE ESPENASSE CASE. Espenasse was a Protestant, of good estate. In 1740 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan," this was a crime. For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life. When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, and he was, through the efforts of Voltaire, released and restored to his family. This was the work of Voltaire. There is not time to tell of the case of General Lally, of the English General Byng, of the niece of Corneille, of the Jesuit Adam, of the writers, dramatists, actors, widows and orphans for whose benefit he gave his influence, his money and his time. But I will tell another case: In 1765, at the town of Abbeville, an old wooden cross on a bridge had been mutilated--whittled with a knife--a terrible crime. Sticks, when crossing each other, were far more sacred than flesh and blood. Two young men were suspected--the Chevalier de la Barre and D'Etallonde. D'Etallonde fled to Prussia and enlisted as a common soldier. La Barre remained and stood his trial.