I tore the cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of my country.

I have always upheld the march forward of the human race, forward towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress without pity.

I have, when the occasion offered, protected my own adversaries, men of your profession.

And there is at Peteghem, in Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a convent of Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793.

I have done my duty according to my powers, and all the good that I was able.