man, the soldier was able to reply with reasonable accuracy. Once or twice his answers were at variance with those of Bertrande to the same question, now and again he hesitated before answering, but in the main he showed a knowledge of the affairs of Martin Guerre which might well have justified his claim to be that man. He also manifested an unusual knowledge of the career of Arnaud du Tilh. This was interesting, for the accused man had known nothing at all of the affairs of du Tilh; he had heard rumors of his existence—that was all. But the newcomer seemed no better informed concerning the affairs of Martin Guerre than the accused had seemed. At the end of an hour the judges were no nearer a decision than they had been early that morning.
There remained a final test, however. The prisoner was summoned and made to stand face to face with the one-legged soldier. Then, one by one, the relatives of the two men were called, and asked to make their choice.
Carbon Bareau, the first of the relatives of du Tilh to be called, stared for a moment with great surprise at the soldier, then, turning without any hesitation at all, laid his hand on the shoulder of the prisoner and said:
“Gentlemen, this is my nephew.”
The brothers of Arnaud, confronted by the two men so extraordinarily similar, hesitated, and then, turning from the prisoner as from the soldier, besought the court to excuse them from bearing witness. The court, with a humanity rare in that century, dismissed them. They had in their request testified more than they realized.
When the youngest sister of Martin Guerre was admitted, she lifted her hands to her forehead in a gesture full of amazement and distress, and then, without hesitation, flung herself upon the breast of the soldier with the wooden leg and burst into tears. One by one the other relatives of Martin Guerre, being admitted, stared with surprise from the soldier to the prisoner and back again, and confessed with many apologies and protestations of sorrow at their mistake that the soldier with one leg was undeniably Martin Guerre, who had been so long away.
It was remarkable that while Martin Guerre received this succession of tearful recognitions with a consistent, stern reserve, Arnaud du Tilh the prisoner, although growing perceptibly graver, lost none of his calm air of assurance and none of his dignity.
Meanwhile the judges, seeing which way the case had turned, sent to their hotel for Pierre Guerre and Bertrande de Rols. The day had been long. For these two lonely defenders of a cause it had seemed longer than a century. When the messenger came for them, they left the confinement of the inn and followed him through the still-confining streets with the intense fatalism of the defeated. The messenger had been instructed to tell them nothing, but rumor had preceded the messenger with the advice that the case had been decided against them. Pierre Guerre was admitted alone, and Bertrande, left in an ante-chamber with a guard, was clearly and sharply aware for the first time in that exhausting day of one thing, and that was that she could not return to Artigues as the wife of Arnaud du Tilh.
After a time the door to the courtroom opened, and she was admitted. She made her way through the crowd toward the space before the judges. Without looking up to see it, she yet felt the intense curiosity of all these unfamiliar faces bent upon her like a physical force. In the silence of the room the insatiable interest of the crowd beat upon her like a sultry wave. She reached the open space, and stopped. There she lifted her eyes at last and saw, standing beside Arnaud du Tilh the man whom she had loved and mourned as dead. She uttered a great cry and turned very pale. The pupils of her parti-colored eyes, the lucky eyes, expanded until the iris was almost lost. Then, reaching out her hands to Martin Guerre, she sank slowly to her knees before him. He did not make any motion toward her, so that, after a little time, she clasped her hands together and drew them toward her breast, and, recovering herself somewhat, said in a low voice:
“My dear lord and husband, at last you are returned. Pity me and forgive me, for my sin was occasioned only by my great desire for your presence, and surely, from the hour wherein I knew I was deceived, I have labored with all the strength of my soul to rid myself of the destroyer of my honor and my peace.”
The tears began to run quietly down her face.
Martin Guerre did not reply immediately, and in the pause which followed, one of the justices, leaning forward, said to Bertrande:
“Madame, we have all been very happily delivered from a great error. Pray accept the profound apologies of this court which did not earlier sufficiently credit your story and your grief.”
But Martin Guerre, when the justice had finished speaking, said to his wife with perfect coldness:
“Dry your tears, Madame. They cannot, and they ought not, move my pity. The example of my sisters and my uncle can be no excuse for you, Madame, who knew me better than any living soul. The error into which you plunged could only have been caused by willful blindness. You, and you only, Madame, are answerable for the dishonor which has befallen me.”
Bertrande did not protest. Rising to her feet, she gazed steadily into the face of her husband and seemed there to see the countenance of the old Monsieur, the patriarch whose authority had been absolute over her youth and over that of the boy who had been her young husband. She recoiled from him a step or two in unconscious self-defense, and the movement brought her near to the author of her misfortunes, the actual Arnaud du Tilh.
In the silence which filled the courtroom at Martin’s unexpected severity, a familiar voice close to her elbow pronounced gently:
“Madame, you wondered at the change which time and experience had worked in Martin Guerre, who from such sternness as this became the most indulgent of husbands. Can you not marvel now that the rogue, Arnaud du Tilh, for your beauty and grace, became for three long years an honest man?”
“Sirrah,” answered Bertrande, “I marvel that you should speak to me, whose devotion has deprived me even of the pity of my husband. I once seemed to love you, it is true. I cannot now hate you sufficiently.”
“I had thought to ask you to intercede for mercy for me,” said Arnaud du Tilh.
“You had no mercy upon me, either upon body or upon soul,” replied Bertrande.
“Then, Madame,” said du Tilh, and there was at last neither arrogance nor levity in his voice, “I can but die by way of atonement.”
Bertrande had turned to look at him as he spoke. She turned now from him towards her husband, and then, without speaking, moved slowly toward the door. The court did not detain her, and the crowd, in some awe, drew aside enough to let her pass without interruption. Bertrande did not see the crowd. Leaving the love which she had rejected because it was forbidden, and the love which had rejected her, she walked through a great emptiness to the door, and so on into the streets of Toulouse, knowing that the return of Martin Guerre would in no measure compensate for the death of Arnaud, but knowing herself at last free, in her bitter, solitary justice, of both passions and of both men.
Arnaud du Tilh, being confined in the prison at Artigues in the days which followed immediately upon the hearing at Toulouse, made a confession in which he stated that he had been tempted to the imposture by the frequency with which he had been mistaken for Martin Guerre. All that he knew of Martin’s life and habits he had gleaned from Martin’s friends, from his servants and from members of his family. He added that he had not originally intended to take Martin’s place in his household, but had intended to stay only long enough to pick up a little silver or gold.
The court decreed that he had been convicted of the several crimes of imposture, falsehood, substitution of name and person, adultery, rape, sacrilege, plagiat, which is the detention of a person who properly belongs to another, and of larceny; and the court condemned him to do penance before the church of Artigues on his knees, in
