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.