With the exception of this story, in the exactitude of which Saint-Foix himself has not very great confidence, since he says, “These are books whose authors seek only to amuse those who read them,”[158] he invokes for the establishment of his theory merely vague conversations, confused reports which he has collected, and the testimony of public rumour. “A surgeon,” he tells us, “named Nélaton, who was in the habit of going every morning to the Café Procope, related there several times, that when first assistant to a surgeon near the Porte Saint-Antoine, he was sent for one day to bleed a person, and that he was taken to the Bastille, where the governor introduced him into the chamber of a prisoner, who had his head covered with a long napkin, tied behind the neck; that this prisoner complained of bad headaches; that his dressing-gown was yellow and black, with large gold flowers; and that from his accent he recognized him to be English.” “Father Tournemine,” adds Saint-Foix,[159] “has often repeated to me that, having gone to pay a visit to the Duchess of Portsmouth with Father Sanders, formerly King James’s confessor, she had said to them, in a succession of conversations, that she should always reproach that Prince’s memory with the execution of the Duke of Monmouth, after Charles II., in the hour of death, and ready to communicate, had made him promise, in the presence of the host, which Huldeston, a Catholic priest, had secretly brought in, that, whatever rebellion the Duke of Monmouth might attempt, he would never have him punished with death. ‘Nor did he do so,’ replied Father Sanders, with animation.” In order to explain how Monmouth could have been carried off alive, and how the people were deceived by this sham execution, Saint-Foix furnishes a proof not a whit less uncertain than the preceding. “It was reported about London,” he says, “that an officer of his army, who closely resembled him, being made prisoner, and certain of being condemned to death, had received the proposal to personate him with as much joy as if he had been accorded life, and that, on this being reported abroad, a great lady, having gained over those who could open his coffin, and having looked at his right arm, exclaimed, ‘Ah! this is not Monmouth!’”[160]