The conqueror resting upon the conquered.--Throned upon the Bastile, the fallen fortress of Night, the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had issued the Dawn. For a moment his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire, and the old smile must have illumined once more the face of death. The vast multitude bowed in reverence, hushed with love and awe heard these words uttered by a priest: "God shall be avenged." The cry of the priest was a prophecy. Priests skulking in the shadows with faces sinister as night, ghouls in the name of the gospel, desecrated the grave. They carried away the ashes of Voltaire. The tomb is empty. God is avenged. The world is filled with his fame. Man has conquered. Was there in the eighteenth century, a man wearing the vestments of the church, the equal of Voltaire? What cardinal, what bishop, what priest in France raised his voice for the rights of men? What ecclesiastic, what nobleman, took the side of the oppressed--of the peasant? Who denounced the frightful criminal code--the torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded for the liberty of the citizen? What bishop pitied the victims of the rack? Is there the grave of a priest in France on which a lover of liberty would now drop a flower or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a saint from which emerges one ray of light? If there be another life--a day of judgment, no God can afford to torture in another world the man who abolished torture in this. If God be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, he should not imprison there the men who broke the chains of slavery here. He cannot afford to make an eternal convict of Voltaire.