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A moment before our condemnation, Babeuf and Darthé received from me, on the benches of the High Court of Vendôme, in presence of the aristocratic axe, which was ready to fall upon them, a promise to avenge their memory, by publishing an exact recital of our common intentions, which party spirit had so strangely misrepresented and disfigured. Now that I am near the close of life, it is time that I acquit myself of this obligation, which diversdiverse [sic] circumstances prevented me from discharging sooner.

Besides other duties, a long and rigorous detention, followed by a surveillance still longer, and oftentimes very embarrassing, on the three opposite extremities of France, precluded me for a long time from the possibility of discussing with ocular witnesses, the causes of the great events of the Revolutiòn, and of procuring certain documents (pieces) that were necessary to elucidate particular facts, which I had proposed to