up to the execration of Europe by that terrible avenger, conveyed some menace to Voltaire of what might befall him. Voltaire replied to him by a Chinese anecdote. ‘I forbid you,’ said a tyrannical emperor to the chief of the tribunal of history, ‘to speak a word more of me.’ The mandarin began to write. ‘What are you doing now?’ asked the emperor. ‘I am writing down the order that your majesty has just given me.’[301] There was a something inexorable as doom about Voltaire’s unrelenting perseverance in getting wrong definitely stamped and transfixed. If he did not succeed in obtaining justice for the memory of La Barre, and in procuring for D’Etallonde free pardon, at least he never abandoned the endeavour, and he was just as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, as he had been while his indignation was freshly kindled. He was more successful in the case of Lally. Count Lally had failed to save India from the English, had been taken prisoner, and had then in a magnanimous way asked his captors to allow him to go to Paris to clear himself from various charges, which the too numerous enemies he had made were spreading against his character and administration. The French people, infuriated at the loss of their possessions in India and Canada, were crying for a victim, and Lally, after a process tainted with every kind of illegality, was condemned to death by the parliament of Paris (1766) on the vague charge of abuse of authority, exactions, and vexations.[302] The murdered man’s son, known in the days of the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the honourable work of procuring revision of the proceedings; and one of the last crowning triumphs of Voltaire’s days was the news brought to him on his dying bed, that his long effort had availed.