Pastoret was elected member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres on the strength of his "Zoroastre, Confucius et Mahomet comparés comme sectaires, legislateurs et moralistes".

It was in that capacity that he was responsible for the transformation of the église Sainte-Génevieve into a temple for the remains of great citizens of the new state were to be honoured: the Panthéon, Paris.

He voted for the abolition of the University of Paris and made a long speech to propose to raise a "statue of liberty" on the ruins of the Bastille.

He also defended royalists and asked that for the remains of Montesquieu to be transferred to the Panthéon, proposed the closure of the popular societies and accused the Directors Barras, Rewbell and La Révellière of fomenting unrest and attracting the hatred of the people on the assembly.

In 1795, he managed to cancel the condemnation to death in-absentia on his friend, the comte de Vaublanc, (who would be the ultra-royalist Minister of the Interior in 1816), because of his involvement in the royalist insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire IV (5 October 1795).