Guerre that he might come to Artigues in perfect safety and inherit his lands.
She watched him as he sat by the fire, fatigued from the day’s work, yet playing gently with the children, holding the youngest child upon his knee, and discoursing meanwhile to Sanxi, and he did not appear a monster. The priest came still, through the winter evenings, as before Bertrande had made her momentous confession, and, hearing the talk between the curé and the master of the house, Bertrande could not but admit that this man was wise, subtle, and, if not learnèd, infinitely skilled in argument. The priest valued him, the children loved him, and these virtues of his which entrenched him with those who should have supported her, but made her the more bitter against him. Passionate as had once been her love for this stranger, so passionate became her hatred of him, and her fear; yet in order that his power over her might not become greater, she dissembled her hatred and veiled her fear; for this reason and also because the innocent and observant eyes of Sanxi were upon her. Now all the years of loneliness before the return of Martin Guerre, or rather, before the coming of the impostor, stood her in good stead. She enclosed in her heart a single fierce determination, and outwardly her life went on as usual.
Still, she sickened. When her pallor was mentioned to her, she explained it by her physical condition. She grew more thin in cheek and shoulder as her belly grew more round. The bones of her face, the delicate arch of the nose, the high cheek bones, the wide and well-shaped skull, defined themselves under the white skin, and beneath the high arching brows her lucky eyes shone with an extraordinary luminosity.
Her husband was extremely attentive to her health, ordering all things that he could imagine to increase her comfort, excusing her from work whenever it was possible, and if there was a battle between them, apparently only Bertrande herself was aware of it. Sometimes she wondered, so unfailing were his courtesies, whether he was indeed aware of the fact that they were enemies. However, in the beginning of the spring and toward the termination of her pregnancy, an incident occurred which defined their positions beyond any doubt.
Martin’s younger sister and her husband, Uncle Pierre Guerre, the curé and Martin Guerre himself, whom Bertrande called the impostor, were returning from mass at Artigues to Martin’s farm. As they approached the inn, the landlord, leaning from an upper story window—for the ground floor was given over to the accommodation of the horses of his guests, according to custom—called to Martin Guerre:
“Hollah, Master Guerre, here is a friend of yours from Rochefort, an old comrade in arms who asks the way to your house.”
He drew in his head, turning around to speak to a person in the room behind him, and as Martin’s party came up to the door of the inn, there issued from that door a thick-set figure wearing a coat of link armor over a red woolen jerkin, who carried a cross-bow slung over one shoulder and a short sword fastened to his belt. His face was scarred from more than battle wounds, and one eye was clouded by some kind of infection that was gradually masking the lens.
“I was at Luchon,” he said, coming close to them, without hesitation, “soaking my old carcass and my scabby hide in that unspeakable mud. It smells of bad eggs, pah, but it is warm, and that feels good. There I learned of your being home again, and I came to stretch my legs before your fire. Eh, Martin, we shall have much to say of Picardy, eh, and other matters less heroic.” He laughed, thrusting his thumbs through his belt, but the man whom he addressed neither laughed nor smiled but regarded him with a somewhat puzzled countenance.
“Eh, Martin?” repeated the soldier, and, indicating by a nod of his head Martin’s younger sister, “Is this your wife?”
“My friend of Rochefort,” said Martin slowly, “I cannot for the life of me remember when or where we met. I am not so certain that we ever met at all.”
The soldier cocked his head to one side, and then, with the gesture of a man who feels the leg of a spavined horse, bent quickly, and grasping Martin below the left knee, gave the leg a sharp squeeze and then a slap. Straightening himself abruptly, he announced:
“Certainly, you do not remember me! You are not even sure you know me, eh? Impostor! You are Monsieur Martin Guerre, my friend? You return from the mass, you are neat and proper, you have a great distaste for the smelly old soldier! You are nothing but a fraud. The true Martin Guerre—I knew him very well. There was a man. He could see beyond the dirt on the face of a friend. He lost a leg before St. Quentin in the year fifty-seven.”
There was a dead silence, during which Martin Guerre lifted his left eyebrow the while he contracted the right, a trick, as his sister remembered, which had been characteristic of his father.
Then Uncle Pierre said:
“Brute! You have the manners of a pig. Take yourself away before you force me to roll you in the dirt.”
“I do not go away so easily,” said the soldier from Rochefort. The man whom he had accused still regarded him calmly, and slowly remarked:
“Doubtless he wishes me to bribe him to leave. I have heard that there was employed under the Duke of Savoy a man who resembled me greatly in feature. Perhaps it was he who lost a leg.”
“Ventre de Dieu,” exclaimed the soldier with increased impatience and scorn. “I knew him well, the true Martin Guerre. He was a Gascon and he lost his left leg at the battle of St. Laurent before St. Quentin. It is all one to me if this man is a rogue. He is your relative, not mine. If he had been Martin Guerre, he would have known me.”
And with many oaths he turned back to the inn, of which all the windows now stood wide open as those within tried to see and hear what went on; he was still cursing under his breath and in more languages than one as he disappeared within the shadow of the doorway, but he made no further effort to have his story believed.
“He is malicious,” said Pierre Guerre with indignation, as the small party proceeded on the way to the farm.
“He was disappointed,” said Martin. “He thought to find a welcome with good lodging and food for a week. I do not grudge him the food, but I cannot have him sitting about every evening telling stories of gallant adventures—which I did not commit—before my wife, who is so sick.”
The curé said nothing, but Martin’s sister and uncle discussed the matter of having the soldier apprehended.
“Let it pass,” said Martin. “It was a mistake; there is truly a man who resembles me. I have heard of him more than once. And the fellow was disappointed. Had he been less foul with disease I would have brought him home with us anyway, to hear the news from Spain.” To the priest he added, “I could wish that this had not happened.”
The priest nodded, said nothing, but the sister continued indignant and voluble, and when they reached the farm, and found Bertrande waiting for them in the kitchen, she burst at once into an account of the adventure.
“Imagine it,” exclaimed Uncle Pierre as the young woman paused for breath. “Only imagine it! He leaned over, this pig of a man, and pinched Martin below the knee as if he had been a horse for sale at the market. I wonder that he did not offer to look at his teeth.”
“He called Martin a rogue,” repeated the sister, ever more indignant. “Worse than that,” said the brother-in-law. “He called Martin an impostor.”
Bertrande, looking from one hot, excited face to another, turned at last her brilliant eyes full upon her husband’s quiet countenance, in a look of triumph and scorn.
“At last,” she cried suddenly in a strange hoarse voice, “at last, dear God, Thou wilt save me!”
She
