My lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it may seal my fate.

But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost.

I am here to regret nothing I have ever done--to retract nothing I have ever said.

I am here to crave with no lying-lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country.

Far from it: even here--here, where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust; here, on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an unanointed soil opened to receive me--even here, encircled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, enraptures me.