He conquered his ordinary bashfulness so far as to ask the president if there were not some means of obtaining mercy for Arnauld du Thill, whom he freely forgave for the past so far as he was concerned.
But good Martin-Guerre was informed that the king alone had the right to interpose, and that for such an extraordinary and notorious crime he would surely refuse to exercise his right of pardon, even though the judges themselves should ask it of him.
"Yes," Gabriel muttered to himself; "yes, the king would refuse to show mercy. And yet he may well need that mercy should be shown himself! But in this case he would do right to be inflexible. No mercy! Never any mercy! Justice!"
Martin-Guerre's thoughts probably did not resemble his master's; for in his absolute need to forgive somebody, he at once opened his arms and his heart to the penitent and humble Bertrande de Rolles.
Bertrande was not even put to the trouble of repeating the prayers and promises which in her last very useful blunder she had poured out upon the forger Arnauld du Thill, when she believed she was speaking to her husband. Martin-Guerre gave her no time to lament anew her errors and her weakness. He cut short her first attempt to speak with a loud kiss, and carried her off, triumphant and delighted, to the blissful little house which he had not seen for so many years.
In front of that very house, which had at last reverted to the hands of its true owner, Arnauld du Thill, a week after his conviction, suffered the penalty which his crimes so well deserved.
Folks came from twenty leagues around to be present at the execution, and the streets of the wretched village of Artigues were more densely thronged that day than those of the capital.
The culprit, it must be said, showed a certain amount of courage in his last moments, and at least ended his shameful life exemplarily.
When the executioner had cried aloud to the people three times, according to custom: "Justice is done!" and while the crowd was slowly melting away in horrified silence, within the house of the victim of the culprit's wiles a man was weeping, and a woman praying; they were Martin-Guerre and Bertrande de Rolles.
His native air, the sight of the locality in which his youth had been passed, the affection of his kinsfolk and his old friends, and, above all, the loving attentions of Bertrande, in a very few days banished from Martin's face every trace of unhappiness.