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.