The two guards ran to announce this news to the Seigneur of La Piroche. He was not willing to believe it, and proceeded to assure himself of the truth of the facts. So puissant a seigneur was he that he was convinced the hanged man would reappear for him there; but he saw what all the rest had seen.
What had become of the dead? For the condemned had certainly died the day before, before the eyes of the whole village.
Had another thief profited by the night to get possession of the armor that covered the corpse?
Possibly—but in taking the armor he would naturally leave the corpse, for which he had no use.
Had the friends or relations of the culprit wished to give him Christian burial?
Nothing impossible in that if it were not for the fact that the culprit had neither friends nor relations, and that people who had had religious sentiments like that would have taken the culprit and left the armor. That, then, was no longer to be thought of. What should one believe, then?
The Seigneur of La Piroche was in despair. He was all for his armor. He made promise of a reward of ten gold écus to any one who should deliver to him the thief, dressed as he was in dying.
They ransacked the houses; they found nothing.
No one presented himself.
They caused a sage of the town of Rennes to be sent for, and they propounded this question to him: