Sirven had three daughters. The youngest was a harmless idiot, much given to brooding. In March of the year 1764 she left her home. The parents searched far and wide but found no trace of the child until a few days later when the bishop of the district informed the father that the girl had visited him, had expressed a desire to become a nun and was now in a convent. Centuries of persecution had successfully broken the spirit of the Protestants in that part of France. Sirven humbly answered that everything undoubtedly would be for the best in this worst of all possible worlds and meekly accepted the inevitable. But in the unaccustomed atmosphere of the cloister, the poor child had soon lost the last vestiges of reason and when she began to make a nuisance of herself, she was returned to her own people. She was then in a state of terrible mental depression and in such continual horror of voices and spooks that her parents feared for her life. A short time afterwards she once more disappeared. Two weeks later her body was fished out of an old well. At that time Jean Calas was up for trial and the people were in a mood to believe anything that was said against a Protestant. The Sirvens, remembering what had just happened to innocent Jean Calas, decided not to court a similar fate. They fled and after a terrible trip through the Alps, during which one of their grandchildren froze to death, they at last reached Switzerland. They had not left a moment too soon. A few months later, both the father and the mother were found guilty (in their absence) of the crime of having murdered their child and were ordered to be hanged. The daughters were condemned to witness the execution of their parents and thereafter to be banished for life. A friend of Rousseau brought the case to the notice of Voltaire and as soon as the Calas affair came to an end, he turned his attention to the Sirvens. The wife meanwhile had died. Remained the duty of vindicating the husband. It took exactly seven years to do this. Once again the tribunal of Toulouse refused to give any information or to surrender any documents. Once more Voltaire had to beat the tom-tom of publicity and beg money from Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia and Poniatowski of Poland before he could force the crown to take an interest. But finally, in the seventy-eighth year of his own life and in the eighth year of this interminable lawsuit, the Sirvens were exonerated and the survivors were allowed to go back to their homes. So ended the second case. The third one followed immediately.