The intelligence of this discovery was at first received with a confidence which was explained by the position of the individual who claimed to have made it. Sprung from one of the oldest and most respectable families of Bearn; admitted, in 1754, into the gendarmes of the King’s Guard; starting, ten years afterwards, in the career of diplomacy, which he pursued always with honour, sometimes with success; sent successively to Switzerland, Poland, and later to Syria, as consul-general; corresponding on terms of friendship with Voltaire, who showed some deference for his opinions;[278] M. de Taulès enjoyed among his contemporaries an authority due as much to the qualities of his mind as to his honourable character. He had lived through the first Empire without desiring to re-enter the service of the State, and had devoted to historical studies the leisure which his independent spirit had created. It was the perusal of an unpublished manuscript memorandum of the Marquis de Bonnac, ambassador at Constantinople, that revealed to Taulès the existence of the Grand Patriarch, Avedick, and his abduction by Ferriol. The writer of this memorandum added that Avedick had been afterwards sent to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, and then transferred to the Bastille, where he had died. “On reading this passage,” says Taulès, “the thought suddenly struck me that this individual might very well be the Iron Mask. Becoming subsequently more and more confirmed in this conjecture by a number of facts which the perusal of the memorandum had confusedly recalled to me, I said to myself, with fresh assurance, ‘Yes, it is himself: this is the Iron Mask!’”[279] In truth, this very natural thought must arise in the mind of every one who reads this memorandum; and if Taulès believed that he at length possessed the solution of the problem, there were many others who would have felt equally self-persuaded. His only fault--but it was a great one--was that of obstinately holding to this opinion when a more complete study of the question would have shown him his error; and of endeavouring to support his theory when it was being shattered, by an accusation of forgery as grave as it was unjust.