For every unprejudiced and impartial reader, these unaffected pages are conclusive, and do not inspire any doubt. But it is not the same for Taulès. According to him, Father Griffet himself, and not Dujonca, is the author of this document, in which, with infinite art, he has introduced several points of obscurity, and succeeded in misleading for ever all those who should be tempted to raise the veil. He has commenced by imagining the two dates of 1698 and 1703, so that it would be impossible to apply them to Avedick, who was still at Constantinople in 1706. It is designedly that, with an infinity of precautions, he has drawn attention to this fact which he had invented at will: “Saint-Mars had this prisoner at Pignerol,” a point on which he insists by saying further on: “This prisoner whom he had guarded since a long time.” To make Dujonca twice affirm that the Man with the Iron Mask was first detained at Pignerol of course absolutely sets Avedick aside. The affectation of speaking several times of the Abbé Giraut, chaplain of the Bastille, is equally significant to Taulès, in so much that it reveals the cunning intention of carefully avoiding having to name the Jesuits, even when it concerns the Bastille, to which one of them was constantly attached. It is true that the registers of the Church of Saint-Paul confirm Dujonca’s journal, since the interment of the prisoner is related in them under the date of November 20, 1703.[288] But this objection does not embarrass Taulès. Without going so far as to suppose that these registers have also been falsified, he is very willing to accept them as authentic. “But,” says he, “this prisoner interred November 20, 1703, is not the one brought by Saint-Mars to the Bastille. It is some obscure stranger, and Father Griffet finding on the registers of this church the proof of his death in 1703, has used it as a basis on which to erect his falsehoods, and by attracting to him the exclusive attention of posterity, has turned it aside from Avedick, and has necessarily rendered ulterior investigations fruitless.” But it is nothing of the kind. In this painful episode of Louis XIV.’s reign, the Jesuits have their share of responsibility, owing to the pressure which they put upon Ferriol, but they are completely innocent of the forgeries of which they have been accused.