"Bishop," said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, "I have passed my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its affairs.
I obeyed.
Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed and confessed them.
Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France was menaced, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor.
I have been one of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up the walls, which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of gold and silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. 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. After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed.
For many years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present the visage of one damned.
And I accept this isolation of hatred, without hating any one myself.
Now I am eighty-six years old; I am on the point of death.
What is it that you have come to ask of me?"
"Your blessing," said the Bishop.
And he knelt down.
When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary had become august.
He had just expired.
The Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot be known to us.
He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following morning some bold and curious persons attempted to speak to him about member of the Convention G----; he contented himself with pointing heavenward.
From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling towards all children and sufferers.