The Two Dianas: Volume 2 by ALEXANDRE DUMAS - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXXIV
 JUSTICE IN A QUANDARY

He who spoke thus, in a commanding tone, cast aside the dark cloak of ample dimensions which hid his person; and Arnauld du Thill's guests, who had turned at the sound of his voice, could see a young cavalier of haughty bearing and richly dressed.

At a little distance a servant was holding by their bridles the two horses on which he and his master had ridden.

All rose respectfully, greatly surprised and very curious.

Arnauld du Thill turned as white as a dead man,

"Monsieur le Vicomte d'Exmès," he muttered in his fright.

"Well," continued Gabriel, in a voice of thunder, addressing him,—"well! you recognize me, do you?"

Arnauld, after hesitating a moment, had quickly reckoned up his chances, and decided upon the course he should take.

"To be sure," said he, in a trembling voice which he struggled to control,—"to be sure I recognize Monsieur le Vicomte d'Exmès, from having sometimes seen him at the Louvre when I was in the service of Monsieur de Montmorency; but I cannot believe that Monseigneur would recognize me, the poor and obscure servant of the constable."

"You forget," said Gabriel, "that you have been my servant as well."

"What, I?" cried Arnauld, feigning the most extreme amazement. "Oh, pardon, Monseigneur is surely mistaken!"

"I am so certain that I am not mistaken," retorted Gabriel, calmly, "that I without hesitation call upon the judge of Artigues, here present, to cause your immediate arrest and imprisonment. Is that sufficiently clear?"

There was a movement of affright among the guests. The wondering judge drew near. Arnauld alone retained his appearance of tranquillity.

"May I not at least know of what crime I am accused?" he asked.

"I accuse you," replied Gabriel, firmly, "of having wickedly substituted yourself for my squire, Martin-Guerre, and of having basely and treacherously stolen his name, his house, and his wife, by means of a resemblance so exact that it passes understanding."

Upon hearing this concisely stated accusation, the guests exchanged looks of stupefied bewilderment.

"What does this mean?" they whispered. "Martin-Guerre not Martin-Guerre? What diabolical sorcery is at the bottom of all this?"

Several of the good people crossed themselves, and repeated beneath their breath certain words designed to exorcise evil spirits. The majority began to look upon their host with something like terror.

Arnauld du Thill saw that it was time for him to strike some decisive blow to win back these timid and yielding creatures to his side; so turning to her whom he called his wife, he cried,—

"Bertrande, speak, I conjure you! Am I or am I not your husband?"

Poor Bertrande, terrified and gasping, thus far had simply, without uttering a word, watched first her husband and then Gabriel, with her great eyes open to their fullest extent.

But at Arnauld du Thill's imperious gesture and his threatening tone, she hesitated no longer, but threw herself into his arms with effusion.

"Dear Martin-Guerre!" she cried.

At these words the charm was broken, and the offensive murmurs were turned against Gabriel.

"Monsieur," said Arnauld du Thill, triumphantly, "in the face of my wife's testimony and that of all my friends and kinsmen, do you still persist in your strange accusation?"

"I do indeed," was Gabriel's reply.

"One moment!" cried Master Carbon Barreau, interposing. "I know very well, my host, that I am not losing my eyesight. If there is somewhere a person who resembles this man, feature for feature, then I declare that one of the two is my nephew, Arnauld du Thill, like myself a native of Sagias."

"Ah, what a fortunate reinforcement just at the right moment!" said Gabriel. "Master," he added, addressing the old man, "do you recognize this man as your nephew?"

"In truth," said Carbon Barreau, "I don't know how to tell whether it is he or the other one; but I would be willing to take my oath in advance that if there is any imposture, my nephew is the impostor, for he was always much addicted to that sort of thing."

"You hear, Monsieur le Juge," said Gabriel to the magistrate; "whichever be the culprit, there can no longer be any doubt about the crime."

"But where is this fellow who, to cheat me, claims to have been cheated himself?" cried Arnauld du Thill, boldly. "Am I not to be confronted with him! Is he in hiding? Let him come forward, and submit to judgment himself."

"Martin-Guerre, my squire," said Gabriel, "has already surrendered himself to the authorities at Rieux, in accordance with my command. Monsieur le Juge, I am the Comte de Montgommery, formerly captain of his Majesty's Guards. The accused himself recognizes me. I call upon you to order him to be arrested and confined, as his accuser has been. When they are both in the hands of justice I hope that I shall be able easily to prove on which side is the truth, and on which the imposture."

"That is very clear, Monseigneur," said the confused judge to Gabriel. "Let Martin-Guerre be taken to prison."

"I give myself up," said Arnauld, "strong as I am in my innocence. My dear, kind friends," he added, addressing the throng, whom he judged it prudent to keep in his interest, "I rely upon your loyal testimony to aid me in this extremity. All of you who have known me heretofore recognize me, do you not?"

"Yes, yes, never fear, Martin!" replied all the friends and kinsfolk, touched by his appeal to them.

As for Bertrande, she had taken occasion to swoon.

Eight days later the hearing of the cause began before the court at Rieux.

Surely it was a curious case, and one difficult to decide. It certainly deserved to be handed down as a cause célèbre to our own days, three hundred years later, as it has been.

If Gabriel de Montgommery had not been somewhat involved in it, it is quite probable that the good judges of Rieux, to whom the cause was submitted, would never have been able to decide it.

What Gabriel was most earnest in asking was that the two adversaries should not be allowed to meet under any pretext until otherwise ordered. They were interrogated and confronted with the witnesses separately, and Martin, as well as Arnauld du Thill, was kept in most rigorous seclusion.

Martin-Guerre, wrapped in a heavy cloak, was confronted one by one with his wife and all his neighbors and friends, all of whom recognized him. It was his face and his figure, and they could not be mistaken.

But all of them were equally positive in their recognition of Arnauld du Thill when he was shown to them.

Carbon Barreau, on the other hand, was equally positive in his recognition of each of them as his nephew, Arnauld du Thill.

They were all excited and terrified, and there seemed to be not the slightest guide by which the truth might be made to appear.

How was it possible to distinguish between two who were such exact counterparts as Arnauld du Thill and Martin-Guerre?

"The Evil One himself would be at his wit's end," said Carbon Barreau, in his confusion between his two nephews.

But in unravelling this unprecedented and extraordinary freak of Nature, the most reliable guides for Gabriel and the judges, failing material differences, would be contradictions in matters of fact and divergent characteristics.

In the story of their early years, Martin and Arnauld du Thill, each in his turn, told exactly the same facts, remembered the same dates, and mentioned the same names, with remarkable unanimity.

In support of his statements, Arnauld produced Bertrande's letters, the family papers, and the ring which was blessed on his wedding day.

But Martin explained it by telling how Arnauld, after having given him up to be hung at Noyon, had had an opportunity to steal all the papers and his wedding-ring.

Thus nothing removed the perplexity of the judges, and their uncertainty never grew less. The appearances and indications were as strong and convincing on one side as on the other; and the allegations of the two accused seemed equally sincere.

Fresh proofs and additional testimony were needed to untie so complicated a knot. Gabriel undertook to find and produce them.

In the first place, the presiding judge propounded this question anew to Martin and to Arnauld du Thill, separately as before.

"Where did you pass your time between your twelfth and your sixteenth year?"

The immediate answer of each of the accused was,—

"At St. Sébastien, in Biscaye, with my cousin Sanxi."

Sanxi was present, summoned as a witness, and testified to the truth of the fact.

Gabriel approached him, and whispered a word in his ear.

Sanxi laughed, and began to address Arnauld in the Basque tongue. Arnauld turned pale, and said not a word.

"What!" said Gabriel, "you passed four years at St. Sébastien, and yet do not understand the dialect of the province?"

"I have forgotten it," stammered Arnauld.

Martin-Guerre, when submitted to this test in his turn, chattered away in Basque for a quarter of an hour, to the great delight of Cousin Sanxi and the edification of the spectators and judges.

This first indication to throw light upon the truth was soon followed by another, which although similar to an experience of Ulysses was no less significant.

The inhabitants of Artigues who were contemporaries of Martin-Guerre still remembered with admiration not unmixed with envy his skill at tennis; but since his return the false Martin had always declined to play when it was suggested, on the plea of a wound in his right hand.

The true Martin-Guerre, on the other hand, took great delight in holding his own against the most expert tennis-players in the presence of the judges.

He played sitting down even, and always wrapped in his cloak. His partner did nothing but bring him the balls, which he hit with really marvellous dexterity.

From that moment public sympathy, so potent a factor on such occasions, was on Martin's side,—that is to say, as very seldom happens, on the side of right.

One more curious fact put the finishing touch to Arnauld du Thill's chances with the judges.

The two accused men were of precisely the same height; but Gabriel, always on the watch for the least sign, thought that he had discovered that his brave squire's foot, his only foot, alas! was much smaller than Arnauld du Thill's.

The old cobbler of Artigues appeared before the court with his old and new measurements.

"Yes," said the old fellow, "it is certain that Martin-Guerre used to wear nines, and I was greatly surprised when he returned to find that he wore twelves; but I took it to be the effect of his long journeys."

The true Martin-Guerre then proudly held out to the cobbler the only foot which Providence had left him, to aid doubtless in the grander triumph of the truth. The simple-minded old man, having taken its measure, recognized it, and declared it to be the identical foot he had shod in former days, and which had remained almost the same in spite of its long travels and the double service it had had to do.

After that decisive testimony everybody was unanimous for Martin's innocence and the guilt of Arnauld du Thill.

But these material proofs were not enough, and Gabriel desired to adduce moral certainty in addition.

He produced the peasant to whom Arnauld du Thill had intrusted the strange commission to announce Martin-Guerre's death by hanging at Noyon. The good man ingenuously told of his amazement at finding in the Rue des Jardins St. Paul the very man whom he had seen take the Lyons road. This was the circumstance which had aroused Gabriel's first suspicion of the real truth.

Then Bertrande de Rolles was examined anew.

Poor Bertrande, in spite of the general change of opinion, was still for him who aroused her fear.

Being asked if she had not noticed a change in her husband's disposition since his return, she replied,—

"Oh, yes, indeed! he came back much changed; but for the better, Messieurs," she hastened to add.

Being pressed to explain herself more clearly, she said naïvely, "Formerly, Martin was weaker and more good-natured than a sheep, and let me lead him about and cuff him till I was ashamed of him. But he came back a man, a master. He proved to me beyond a doubt that I was very wrong before, and that it is my duty as his wife to obey his word and his stick. Now he commands, and I wait upon him; he lifts his hand, and I kiss his feet. He brought back this air of authority from his travels, and since his return our relations have become what they should be. We are going in the right direction now, and I am very glad of it."

Others of the Artigues people testified that the old Martin-Guerre had always been as inoffensive and pious and kind as the new one was quarrelsome and blasphemous and niggardly.

Like the cobbler and Bertrande they had attributed these changes to his travels.

At last Comte Gabriel de Montgommery deigned to give evidence, amid the respectful silence of judges and spectators.

He told of the strange circumstances attending his having in his service the two Martin-Guerres, one after the other; how he had puzzled for a long while over the singular variations in the disposition and character of his double squire, and of the events which had finally led him to suspect the truth.

In short, Gabriel told everything that we have told heretofore,—Martin's frights and Arnauld du Thill's treason, the virtues of the one and the crimes of the other; he made the whole obscure and confused history as clear as day, and ended by demanding punishment of the culprit and restitution of his rights for the innocent man.

The justice of that day was less obliging and convenient for accused persons than that of the present time. Thus it was that Arnauld du Thill was still ignorant of the overwhelming evidence adduced against him. He had seen with much anxiety the tests of knowledge of the Basque patois and skill in the game of tennis result to his disadvantage; but he believed that he had, after all, given sufficiently plausible excuses. As for the episode of the old cobbler, he had understood nothing of it. Last of all, he did not know whether Martin-Guerre, who was persistently kept out of his sight, had come out any better than he himself had from the various examinations and ordeals.

Gabriel, moved by a just and generous feeling, had insisted that Arnauld du Thill should be allowed to be present when the speech summing up the charges should be made, and to reply to it if necessary. Martin was under no such necessity, and remained in his prison. But Arnauld was brought before the tribunal so that judgment might be passed after hearing both sides; and he lost not a word of Gabriel's forcible and convincing statement.

However, when Gabriel had finished, Arnauld du Thill, without yielding an inch to fear or discouragement, calmly rose and asked leave to speak in his own defence. The court would have refused; but Gabriel seconded his request, and he was allowed to speak.

He spoke admirably; the cunning blackguard was really eloquent by nature, and had a shrewd and clever mind.

Gabriel's principal endeavor had been to apply the evidence to dispelling the obscurity which hung about the adventures of the two Martins. Arnauld, on the other hand, devoted himself to twisting all the threads together again and to bringing the minds of the judges a second time into that state of confusion in which lay his only hope. He avowed that he himself could in nowise comprehend all the entanglements arising from these two existences, which were continually being mistaken for each other. It was not his affair to explain all the blunders for which they tried to hold him responsible. All he had to do was to answer for his own life and justify his own actions; and that he was ready to do.

He then repeated the logically arranged and compact story of his own acts and movements from his cradle down to that day. He spoke to his friends and kinsfolk, reminding them of circumstances which they had themselves forgotten, laughing at certain memories, and weeping at others.

He could not speak Basque, it is true, nor play tennis; but everybody had not the faculty of remembering languages, and he showed the scar on his hand. Even if his adversary had satisfied the court on those two points, nothing was easier when occasion demanded than to learn a patois and attain skill at a game by practice.

The Comte de Montgommery, certainly led astray by some mischief-maker, accused him of having stolen from his squire the papers which established his name and his identity; but there was no proof of that fact.

As for the peasant, who could say that he was not an accomplice of the soi-disant Martin?

Regarding the money for the Comte de Montgommery's ransom, which he. Martin-Guerre, was accused of having stolen, he could only say that he had returned to Artigues with a certain sum larger than that lost by the count; but he accounted for it by exhibiting the certificate of the very eminent and powerful nobleman, the Connétable Duc de Montmorency.

In his peroration, Arnauld with infinite address rung the changes upon the constable's mighty name in the ears of the bewildered judges. He insisted that they should send to make inquiries concerning him of his illustrious master, and he was confident that the result of such inquiries would be his speedy and decisive justification.

In short, the crafty rascal's speech was so clever and insidious, he expressed himself with so much warmth, and impudence sometimes so closely resembles innocence, that Gabriel saw that the judges were undecided and wavering once more.

It was necessary then to strike a decisive blow; and Gabriel, although it was much against his wish, determined to do it.

He spoke a single word in the president's ear; whereupon the latter ordered Arnauld du Thill to be remanded to prison and Martin-Guerre to be produced.

END OF VOL. II.