Slight as was the basis of this theory, it must be admitted that Father Griffet combated it with very inconclusive arguments, and that Saint-Foix had no great difficulty in refuting him in his turn. To the objection founded upon the uselessness of always leaving in mystery the name of the prisoner who died in 1703, when both James II. and William of Orange had also ceased to live, Saint-Foix replied, very judiciously, that Louis XIV. might have consented to guard Monmouth at Pignerol, both in order to oblige James II., his ally, and to have in his power a Stuart, whom he might one day be able to oppose to the ambition of William of Orange, if James II. continued to remain childless; but that the unexpected birth of a Prince of Wales[161] having rendered this piece of foresight useless, it was natural that Louis XIV. would not wish it known that he had constituted himself the gaoler of an English prince. “It was very likely indeed,” added Saint-Foix,[162] “that the partisans of William of Orange having published that this Prince of Wales was a supposititious child, would not have failed to say that since means had been found to represent on the scaffold and behead one man in place of another, it was much easier to feign a pregnancy and a confinement.” Now Louis XIV., who had continued to support the exiled Stuarts with sufficient obstinacy to imprudently recognize this Prince of Wales under the title of James III.,[163] was bound to prevent a revelation of a nature to confirm the injurious doubts which had arisen at the period of this Prince’s birth.[164] The necessity for the mystery being thus justified by the pride and self-interest of Louis XIV., Saint-Foix refuted Father Griffet not less cleverly on the point of the substitution of an unknown individual for Monmouth about to die on the scaffold. Reproached with its improbability, he answered that this generosity was very easy to comprehend--that such an act of devotion had scarcely any merit in an officer of Monmouth’s army, condemned, like the latter, to death, and who was sacrificing to his old general, not his life, but simply his name. Finally, a comparative examination of several circumstances connected with the execution, ingeniously touched upon and grouped together, such as the choice of the bishops attending the condemned, the few words that he uttered, the look of reproach which he gave the executioner, who did not kill him at the first blow of the axe,[165] finished by convincing Saint-Foix.