What did he do?
We none of us know, neither you nor I, nor anybody else. He is assuredly
dead, and lies in some graveyard far enough from here. May God have
mercy on his soul!"

Bertrande, weeping, made the sign of the cross, and bowed her head upon
her hands.

"Good-bye, Sanxi," said the uncle, tapping the child's,' cheek. Sanxi
turned sulkily away.

There was certainly nothing specially attractive about the uncle: he
belonged to a type which children instinctively dislike, false, crafty,
with squinting eyes which continually appeared to contradict his honeyed
tongue.

"Bertrande," he said, "your boy is like his father before him, and only
answers my kindness with rudeness."

"Forgive him," answered the mother; "he is very young, and does not
understand the respect due to his father's uncle. I will teach him
better things; he will soon learn that he ought to be grateful for the
care you have taken of his little property."

"No doubt, no doubt," said the uncle, trying hard to smile. "I will give
you a good account of it, for I shall only have to reckon with you two
in future. Come, my dear, believe me, your husband is really dead, and
you have sorrowed quite enough for a good-for-nothing fellow. Think no
more of him."

So saying, he departed, leaving the poor young woman a prey to the
saddest thoughts.

Bertrande de Rolls, naturally gifted with extreme sensibility, on which
a careful education had imposed due restraint, had barely completed her
twelfth year when she was married to Martin Guerre, a boy of about the
same age, such precocious unions being then not uncommon, especially in
the Southern provinces. They were generally settled by considerations of
family interest, assisted by the extremely early development habitual
to the climate. The young couple lived for a long time as brother and
sister, and Bertrande, thus early familiar with the idea of domestic
happiness, bestowed her whole affection on the youth whom she had been
taught to regard as her life's companion. He was the Alpha and Omega of
her existence; all her love, all her thoughts, were given to him, and
when their marriage was at length completed, the birth of a son seemed
only another link in the already long existing bond of union. But, as
many wise men have remarked, a uniform happiness, which only attaches
women more and more, has often upon men a precisely contrary effect, and
so it was with Martin Guerre. Of a lively and excitable temp