The one party deemed me worse than I was; the others, better.

I have merely followed my nature, and that impelled me, above all, to liberty.

I fancied I saw her image in the parliaments, which at least possessed her tone and forms, and I embraced this phantom of representative freedom.

Thrice did I sacrifice myself for those parliaments; twice from a conviction on my part; the third, not to belie what I had previously done.

I had been in England; I had there seen true liberty, and I doubted not that the States-General, and France also, wished to obtain freedom.