But, as an eighteenth-century historian very rightly points out, a case gained before the Parlement was not necessarily a victory at the tribunal of public opinion; while over and over again that body had quashed the decrees of the lesser courts only to have its own verdict reversed by the judgment of history. The proceedings at Saint-Jean-d’Angely were declared null and of no effect, but the affair was not sent back for trial to the place where the supposed crime had been committed, nor submitted to a new examination. Thus, the Princesse de Condé, though pronounced innocent by the Law, was not exonerated by a large section of the public; nor has time altogether effaced the suspicions which remained in so many minds.[138] Since all the documents connected with the investigation at Saint-Jean-d’Angely were, by order of the Parlement, solemnly burned by the registrar of the Court, in the presence of the First President, Achille de Harlay, and the _rapporteur_, Édouard Molé, until some fresh evidence shall be forthcoming, historians must renounce the hope of discovering the truth of this _cause célèbre_, and content themselves with more or less hazardous conjectures. That the prince died from the effects of poison was undoubtedly the firm belief of practically all his contemporaries. One writer of the time alone, so far as we are aware, Joseph Texeira,[139] takes a different view. In 1598, Texeira published an historical treatise, in Latin, dealing with the principal events of Henri IV.’s reign,[140] in the course of which he denied that the Prince de Condé had been poisoned, and attributed his death to the injuries he had received at Coutras, from which, as we have mentioned, he had suffered a great deal of pain. Texeira pretends that the doctors who performed the autopsy were divided as to the cause of death, and that the opinion of those who held that it was due to natural causes was adopted, after a solemn discussion, by the Faculty of Montpellier. But Désormeaux, so devoted to the Condé family, confesses that, despite his active researches, he was unable to find the proof of the two facts advanced by Texeira in the documents of the time, whether published or in manuscript, and if, after this avowal, he inclines to the same opinion, it is because he cannot bring himself to believe that Texeira, Almoner to the King and Councillor of State, was capable of a lie.[141]