The material is distributed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license - from Mariano Tomatis.
With many thanks for Mariano in giving me permission to reproduce his excellent researches!
The text compiled by Saunière in his defense opens with the list of works carried out in twenty-five years: the renovation of the church, the construction of the garden, the restoration of the cemetery and the presbytery, the construction of the villa and the Tour. The priest confirms his intention to give the bishop all the possessions to make him a retirement home:
I intended to donate everything to Monsignor as I had the honour of telling him, already a few years ago, by hands-free in Carcassonne and as I confirmed to him recently in writing. The total expense for the aforementioned works is indicated with little precision: All these works, purchases and decorations cost approximately a sum of between 100 and 150 thousand francs not fully paid and which do not include the amount of the work carried out personally, the excavations, the operations, the transport of material, etc. etc. Today that everything is completed, because of some anonymous letter, because of more or less well-founded accounts, the work of some lay person but above all of envious and jealous confreres – because the enemy of the priest is the priest, Monsignor absolutely wants to know the origin, the origin of all this money used for constructions. He intends at all costs to know the names of the people who donated them to me, the sums they entrusted to me and the intention that these people had to entrust these sums to me.
The Bishop's request is to be able to analyse the notebooks in which Saunière recorded all the donations received. The priest explicitly denies possessing it:
This book that claims does not exist, I have only a few insignificant receipts left, and even assuming that such a book existed, I would not feel in the least obliged in conscience to deliver it to him. The reason is the one already expressed in the memorial: many donations have been anonymous and those who made them do not want their name to be disclosed.
In reality, many notebooks of the Saunière Masses came up to us, proving that he owned them but wanted to keep them hidden from the bishop1. Also in this text Saunière lists the priests to whom he entrusted the oversold masses:
My poor brother who has been deceased for 5 years, Don Cassignac old parish priest of Bézu, Don Gabelle, old priest of Arques, Calvel now retired in Limoux, Raynaud old parish priest of Fa, Don Tisseyre, old parish priest of Serres, a priest of Tarn and two expelled priests whose name I forgot, and the father Ferrafiat Lazarist of N.D. de Marceille.
Strangely, the list is different from the one provided in the memorial: don Cassignac, there "old parish priest of Bécède", becomes "old parish priest of Bézu", appear Don Calvel and a priest of Tarn (of whose name he does not remember); the three exiled religious become two, and on this occasion Saunière does not provide the name, which instead he says he has forgotten. The Bishop must have noticed that all the priests mentioned were deceased; Saunière writes:
It is not enough for ecclesiastical authority for me to provide the names of the deceased priests to whom I have entrusted my masses. He would like to have the names of priests alive and not dead. To verify what I say, which they show they do not believe, he asks me for the receipts of the donations of these masses. The priest claims, in closing, that he has never made an illicit trade in masses nor that he has ever raised the prices of the masses to keep the difference to himself ("as other priests have done"):
The only thing that can be reproached for me is the fact that I kept the masses paid 2 francs or higher amounts for me and having entrusted the least paid to others.
1. They are currently in the hands of the spouses Antoine Captier and Claire Corbu, heirs of Noel Corbu.
2. The entire defense text cited here is reproduced in Claire Corbu, Antoine Captier, L'héritage de l'Abbé Saunière&, Bélisane, Nice 1995, pp. 201-206.