The priest pleaded the horrible rumours of the world as to the damnable books of which the sick man was alleged to be the author. Voltaire replied by warning him very peremptorily that in refusing to administer the viaticum he was infringing the law, and the consequence was that he did duly receive the viaticum, after which he signed a solemn act in the presence of a notary, declaring that he pardons his various calumniators; that ‘if any indiscretion prejudicial to the religion of the State should have escaped him,’ he seeks forgiveness from God and the State; and finally he forgave the bishop of Annecy, who had calumniated him to the king, and whose malicious designs had come to nought. The priest and notary afterwards falsified this amazing declaration so as to appease the bishop, and came to Voltaire praying him not to betray them. ‘I prove to them,’ he says, ‘that they will be damned, I give them something to drink, and they go away delighted.’[286] A younger philosopher of his school remarks with his accustomed gravity on this most singular transaction, that the satisfaction of forcing his priest to administer by fear of the secular judges, and of insulting the bishop of Annecy in a juridical manner, cannot excuse such a proceeding in the eyes of the free and firm man, who weighs calmly the claims of truth and the requirements of prudence, when laws contrary to natural justice render truth dangerous and prudence indispensable.[287] To which reflection we may perhaps add another, suggested by the cruel experience of the church in France within five and twenty years from Voltaire’s impious communion, that if any order, secular or spiritual, constrains its adversaries under penalties to the commission of base acts, then if the chances of time should ever transfer the power to the other side, that order has only itself to blame for whatever wrong may mark the retaliation. There is no more dangerous policy in affairs of state than to strip your opponent of self-respect, and this the descendants of the persecutors found out to their extreme cost, when in 1793 they had to deal with the descendants of the persecuted.