due time they had a child, and all went on happily enough, till one day, when of the ripe age of twenty-one, Martin stole some corn from his father, and, in fear of punishment, silently absconded. For eight years Martin Guerre was dead to his family. They never heard of, or from, him; letters in those days were few, and travellers scarce; and Martin Guerre had passed out of the little world of Artigues as if he had never been. Suddenly, one day, he reappeared. As he had been absent for eight years, he was not quite the same man as when he went away; but it was he sure enough-the same marks on his face and hands, the blood-spot in his left eye, the two tusks in the upper jaw, the broken nail of the first finger, the three warts on the right hand, and another on the little finger, as well as the scar on the right eyelid, and the pit which an ulcer had left in his face; signs by which all men might have known Martin Guerre among a thousand. Besides, when he spoke to Bertrande de Rols, the wife, he knew all the secrets lying between them; who the wedding guests had been, where a certain suit was, or ought to be, of which Bertrande herself knew nothing; with some other small mysteries nearer and dearer still. Bertrande had not a doubt that this was Martin's very self: nor had her own immediate relations, nor had his uncle, nor his four sisters. The lost was certainly found, the prodigal publicly repentant, and all Artigues rejoiced with the pretty young wife at the return of her vagrant. So the matter stood for three years; two children were born to the pleasant couple, and though they were strangely unlike Sanxi, Martin's first child, no one thought any the worse of them or their mother for that. But at last, a little, half-inarticulate whisper got abroad, which soon swelled into a loud and angry cry, and the whisper was: "This is not Martin Guerre, but Arnauld du Tilh." The Martin of the past, said some, was taller and darker, of more slender build, bow-backed, highshouldered, with a cleft in his chin, and a large and flat snub nose; while the Martin of the present, for all his personal marks, had none of these more important characteristics; and especially, his nose was neither large, nor flat, nor snub. When the sluice was once opened, the waters rushed in. All sorts of differences and discrepancies were seen and commented on; and, at last, the cry grew so loud and fierce, that poor Bertrande, who had been the last to give in to the storm, was forced to bow to it. She was made to undertake a prosecution against the man who, for three years, had been to her as Martin Guerre, citing him to appear as Arnauld du Tilh, to answer to the charge of false personation-with other crimes yet more grave and serious. Many witnesses were called on this strange trial: some for, more against, the identity of Arnauld du Tilh with Martin Guerre. One said that Martin had been notoriously skilful in certain games, of which Arnauld knew nothing; another-this was Jean Espagnol, landlord of a little inn not far distant said that Arnauld had confessed to him that he was not Martin Guerre at all, but only Arnauld du Tilh, beseeching him not to betray him, Arnauld adding that Martin had made over to him all his goods and his rights: whereat Bertrande grew red and bridled. A third said that he had known from the first that the accused was Arnauld du Tilh, and not Martin Guerre, but that he had had a sign not to betray him; so said another, adding that he, the accused, had given him two handkerchiefs for his brother, Jean du Tilh. A soldier, newly arrived from Rochefort, accompanied by two other witnesses, deposed that the true Martin Guerre was in Flanders, with a wooden leg in place of the one he had lost before St. Quentin. Others said that Martin was a Biscayan, and could speak the Biscayan dialect, of which Arnauld was profoundly ignorant; and a few called the attention of the judge to the striking difference between Sanxi, the true Martin's acknowledged child, and the two infants born of the false. On the other hand, Martin's uncle and four sisters testified in Arnauld's favour, and swore positively that he was Martin Guerre and none other, and that the various witnesses against his identity were mistaken, or suborned. In this manner the excitement was kept up, and public opinion very fairly divided, for some time; when suddenly the true Martin Guerre came upon the scene, and complicated matters still more. For Arnauld was not to be outwitted easily. He turned round against Martin, and denounced him as the impostor; and for a time justice was undecided as to the real criminal. But proofs were too strong. The few dear secrets by which Arnauld had been helped to win pretty Bertrande, Martin confessed he had confided to him; also the secret of those white-lined blue breeches in the chest, of which Bertrande herself knew nothing, and the knowledge of which had seemed to her so conclusive. The game was up. Martin was immensely offended with his friends, and grievously indignant that his wife had been deceived; the law was sharp in those days, and neither Martin nor the law understood much of mercy. Arnauld du Tilh was convicted of perjury and imposture, and these were crimes of which men were jealous. Wherefore he was sentenced to do penance, standing in a white shirt, bareheaded and barefooted, having a rope round his neck and a lighted taper in his hand, thus to ask pardon of God, the king, and of justice, also of Martin Guerre, and Bertrande de Rols, his wife; after which the executioner was to lead him through the most public streets and roads about Artigues, and then he was to be hung up by the cord round his neck on a gibbet erected before Martin's house. And when he had hung long enough he was to be cut down, and his dishonoured carcase burnt. His one surviving child by Bertrande was to inherit all his goods: which, however, were not many. Arnauld du Tilh played with edged tools, and he cut his hands grievously in the process. In 1649 died Lancelot le Moine, leaving his three children, Pierre, Jacques, and Louis, under seau, : upon Justice was forced to make amends; which she did, but as surlily as possible; releasing Monrousseau from prison with a sulky pardon for no crime done, and enjoining him to bring up Louis as his son, Louis being enjoined to obey and consider him as his father: neither of them having ever wanted anything but the right of considering themselves father and son. Claude le Moine was released from his enforced guardianship over the little beggar-boy; and Jeanne Vacherot had her hundred livres restored to her. the sole guardianship of his wife, Jeanne Vacherot. About four years after his death Jeanne went to an estate she had at Vernon, taking with her the youngest child, little Louis, but leaving her elder two, big boys now of ten and fourteen, under the care of their grandmother and a faithful old servant. One day the two boys went out to play with a companion named Coustard but though they went out, they forgot to come in again, for all three urchins ran away to see the world, leaving parents and guardians in a beautiful state of uncertainty and excitement. A short time after their flight, There was another very curious case of misJeanne Vacherot saw, sitting on the steps of taken identity in France. A Calvinist family, the Hôtel Dieu, a boy so exactly like her son named De Caille, were exiled from Provence at Jacques, that she went to the police of that the time of the revocation of the Edict of time, making a statement of her loss, and add- Nantes. They were people of standing and coning her belief that the little beggar-boy of the dition, owning a good property, which, when the Hotel Dieu was her son. On further examina- law of 1689 was passed, that all those absent tion she dropped her claim, and went back to from the kingdom on account of their religion Vernon. The beggar who was called Monrous- should forfeit their estates to their nearest reand the child who was Jacques le Moine's latives, passed into the hands of a Dame Anne double, went there too; and soon the whole Rolland and a Dame Tardivi, as the nearest neighbourhood was in an uproar. The people inheritors of Dame Judith la Gouche-Madame all said that the child was Jeanne's: Jeanne de Caille. In process of time sundry members Vacherot said it was not, for all its fair hair, of the Caille family died at their new home in and the mother's mark, so exactly like that on Lausanne, and among them the eldest son, the missing Jacques. Besides, Jacques le Moine Isaac de Rougon, a studious, consumptive young was a well-educated lad for his years, and little man of thirty or so, leaving De Caille now Monrousseau, the beggar, could not read or absolutely heirless-if haply, indeed, any son of write. But this was held to be no proof at all. his would have constituted himself the heir by Indignant at Jeanne's heartlessness, some of the renouncing his father's faith, and becoming a neighbours, having first nearly killed her, insti- Catholic for the sake of gain. A few years after tuted an action against her, to make her ac- the death of this Isaac, and when the Rollands knowledge her child, the little beggar; and and the Tardivis were furthest from dreaming of though Jeanne was ably defended, yet she lost any disturbance, a man known elsewhere by the her cause from the overwhelming testimony name of Pierre Mêge, a marine soldier of no brought against her. Twenty-one witnesses very delightful antecedents, came before the auswore to the identity of this little beggar-boy thorities, giving himself out as De Caille's eldest with Jacques le Moine. Servants, tradespeople, son, so long reported dead. He had not been one or two kinsfolk, the surgeon who had made dead at all, said Pierre Mêge, Sieur de Rougon; a certain cicatrice upon his body, the farmers on the contrary, he had been kept locked up by on the mother's estate, in short, every one who his father for many years, the old man having had any idea on the matter at all. Only Jeanne the intensest hatred to him, because of his inI stood out that he was not her son, and Monrous-clination for the Catholic faith. He had, howseau stood out that he was his. The other side ever, managed to escape after repeated trials and won; and the decree was hard enough, consider-increased severities; and he gave a strange acing what the truth was. Claude le Moine, bro- count of himself since that escape. He acknowther to the defunct Lancelot, was ordered to ledged that he had passed by the name of Pierre take the boy to his heart and home. Jeanne Mêge, whom he had known on board the Fidelle, was made to grant him a pension of a hundred where they had both served, but where he was livres; but to mark the disapprobation of her distinguished by the sobriquet of "Le Grenadier unmotherly conduct, she was deprived of all sans regret;" acknowledged, too, that he had maternal privileges and rights over him. Mon- passed as Pierre Mêge with Honorade Venelle, rousseau, the beggar, was imprisoned and heavily the wife, she knowing of the deception all the ironed for the crime of stealing a well-born time, and helping to keep it up-the friends, child, and hiding the truth when he had the op- creditors, and relatives of the true Pierre acportunity of undoing his wrong; and for three cepting him without reserve or suspicion. But years this wise arrangement was in full force. now the time had come when it was his duty to Jeanne and her kinsfolk, kept "in silence," that throw off this pretence of Pierre Mêge, this false is, not allowed to appeal; Monrousseau kept in mask or larva that hid his true features, and come prison and irons; and the little beggar-boy kept forward boldly to claim his rights as André in luxury and unhappiness. And then vagrant d'Entrevergues, eldest son and heir of le Sieur Master Jacques, the real son of Lancelot le de Caille. The lawsuit that ensued is too long Moine and Jeanne Vacherot, returned, giving a to dissect here. The most startling points in it pitiful account of his three years' wanderings, were, that this pretended heir could neither and poor elder brother Pierre's death. Where-read nor write; that he gave himself a wrong : name-the name of De Caille's eldest son being fastened to his head, and the surgeon had reIsaac de Rougon, and not André d'Entre- leased it by cutting it through. Strangely vergues; that he did not know his father's enough, Pierre Mêge had precisely the same kind proper name or titles, nor his dead brother's, of cicatrice round his left ear, beside other nor his mother's; nor his sister's age, height, personal signs not usually found so exactly complexion, or name; nor the name of the alike in two different men. A few things, too, street, or number of the family house at Ma- on his adversaries' side seem to indicate fear nosque, in Provence, where he was born and of his cause, such as M. Rolland's suppression had lived up to quite intelligent boyhood; nor of certain facts that might seem to tell against the name of the house at Lausanne; nor any his case, his proved subornation of witnesses, circumstance whatever connected with the and the ill-refuted charge of his attempt to family in short, he seems to us, on reading poison the persistent claimant. the report, to have been the most clumsy and transparent of humbugs and adventurers. But he explained away all these discrepancies and appearances, and so cleverly too, that he got the parliament of Provence and above four hundred of the most respectable people of Manosque on his side. The parliament declared him the rightful heir of the heretic De Caille, and, on his public baptism into the bosom of Holy Church, formally installed him into the De Caille possessions, hitherto held by the Rollands and the Tardivis. But M. Rolland was a lawyer and a man of spirit. He carried the thing to Paris, where heads were clearer and wits sharper than in the provinces; and one of his first successful moves was to hunt up Honorade Venelle, whom he counted on as his best ally. For Pierre Mêge, or Isaac de Rougon-he had learnt his own name by this time-had married a pretty girl of Manosque, sister to one Serri who had secretly helped him through the process; and M. Rolland knew that no Honorade Venelle in the world could see that bit of chicanery without protest. And M. Rolland reasoned rightly. In spite of the one hundred and thirty ocular witnesses, and the three hundred by hearsaywho testified to the identity of Pierre Mêge with the dead Isaac de Rougon-truth, Honorade's indignant denunciations, baptismal and mortuary documents, and a thousand little ugly corners left unsmoothed, and gaps unfilled in Pierre's evidence, set the matter on a new basis. The Paris parliament undid the work which the Provençal had built up. The Tardivis and the Rollands were reinstated; the poor little Serri girl was decreed to be nor maid, nor wife, nor widow, while to the loud-voiced, redfaced Honorade were assigned all the honours of matrimony and matronhood; Pierre Mêge was adjudged thief, perjurer, bigamist, and impostor, dispossessed of his ill-gotten wealth, and finally sent off to prison, where he was to be seen for many years after-a shy, sullen, stupid fellow, who would never say or confess to anything, and who hid an immense deal of craft under the appearance of profound stupidity. The chief points of identity between him and Isaac de Rougon had been in certain accidental marks, specially a mark round the left ear, which was by no means common. For the young De Caille had been born with one ear There was another very curious story of Count Beneventa's servant, who was claimed by a certain man as his brother, joint-heir with himself of their dead father's property. But though the offer was tempting and the opportunity rare, the man was not to be persuaded out of his identity, and refused the brother, and the mother, and even the dead father's goods, and stood by his true and real self, "to the admiration of all beholders." After all, it must be one of the most disagreeable things in the world to have a second self-another "William Wilson" stalking through life as one's shadow. It is bad enough to have to bear the consequences of one's own follies and misdeeds: if those follies and misdeeds were multiplied by two, the burden upon some of us would be heavier than we could possibly support. The right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors. Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Strend. Printed by C. Waiting, Beaufort House, Strand, ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. THE house I occupied at L- was a quaint, old-fashioned building-a corner house-one side, in which was the front entrance, looked upon a street which, as there were no shops in it, and it was no direct thoroughfare to the busy centres of the town, was always quiet, and at some hours of the day almost deserted. The other side of the house fronted a lane; opposite to it was the long and high wall of the garden to a Young Ladies' Boarding-School. My stables adjoined the house, abutting on a row of smaller buildings, with little gardens before them, chiefly occupied by mercantile clerks and retired tradesmen. By the lane there was short and ready access both to the high turnpike road and to some pleasant walks through green meadows and along the banks of a river. [PRICE 2d. wall of the school garden; I enjoyed the ease with which, by opening the glazed sash-door, I could get out, if disposed for a short walk, into the pleasant fields; and so completely had I made this sanctuary my own, that not only my manservant knew that I was never to be disturbed when in it, except by the summons of a patient, but even the housemaid was forbidden to enter it with broom or duster, except upon special invitation. The last thing at night, before retiring to rest, it was the man-servant's business to see that the sash-window was closed and the gate to the iron palisade locked, but during the daytime I so often went out of the house by that private way that the gate was then very seldom locked, nor the sash-door bolted from within. In the town of L there was very little apprehension of house-robberies-especially in the daylight— and certainly in this room, cut off from the main building, there was nothing to attract a vulgar cupidity. A few of the apothecary's shelves and This house I had inhabited since my arrival at cases still remained on the walls, with, here and L—, and it had to me so many attractions, there, a bottle of some chemical preparation for exin a situation sufficiently central to be con- periment. Two or three wormeaten, wooden chairs; venient for patients, and yet free from noise, two or three shabby old tables; an old walnutand favourable to ready outlet into the country tree bureau, without a lock, into which odds and for such foot or horse exercise as my profes- ends were confusedly thrust, and sundry uglysional avocations would allow me to carve for looking inventions of mechanical science, were, myself out of what the Latin poet calls the "solid assuredly, not the articles which a timid proprietor mass of the day," that I had refused to change it would guard with jealous care from the chances for one better suited to my increased income; of robbery. It will be seen later why I have been but it was not a house which Mrs. Ashleigh thus prolix in description. The morning after I would have liked for Lilian. The main objection had met the young stranger, by whom I had to it, in the eyes of the 'genteel' was, that it had been so favourably impressed, I was up, as usual, formerly belonged to a member of the healing a little before the sun, and long before any of my profession, who united the shop of an apothe-scrvants were astir. I went first into the room I cary to the diploma of a surgeon; but that shop had given the house a special attraction to me; for it had been built out on the side of the house which fronted the lane, occupying the greater portion of a small gravel court, fenced from the road by a low iron palisade, and separated from the body of the house itself by a short and narrow corridor that communicated with the entrance-hall. This shop I turned into a rude study for scientific experiments, in which I generally spent some early hours of the morning, before my visiting patients began to arrive. I enjoyed the stillness of its separation from the rest of the house; I enjoyed the glimpse of the great chesnut-trees which overtopped the VOL. VI. have mentioned, and which I shall henceforth designate as my study, opened the window, unlocked the gate, and sauntered for some minutes up and down the silent lane skirting the opposite wall, and overhung by the chesnut-trees rich in the garniture of a glorious summer; then, refreshed for work, I re-entered my study and was soon absorbed in the examination of that now wellknown machine, which was then, to me at least, a novelty; invented, if I remember right, by Monsieur Dubois-Reymond, so distinguished by his researches into the mysteries of organic electricity. It is a wooden cylinder fixed against the edge of a table; on the table two vessels filled with salt and water are so placed that, as you close 128 with those noble limbs, in this den! Do you not long for a rush through the green of the fields, a bath in the blue of the river ?" your hands on the cylinder, the forefinger of each hand can drop into the water; each of the vessels has a metallic plate, and communicates by wires with a galvanometer with its needle. Now the Here he came to a pause, standing, still in the theory is, that if you clutch the cylinder firmly grey light of the growing day, with eyes whose with the right hand, leaving the left perfectly pas-joyous lustre forestalled the sun's, and lips sive, the needle in the galvanometer will move from which seemed to laugh even in repose. west to south; if, in like manner, you exert the left arm, leaving the right arm passive, the needle will deflect from west to north. Hence, it is argued | that the electric current is induced through the agency of the nervous system, and that, as human Will produces the muscular contraction requisite, so is it human Will that causes the deflection of the needle. I imagined that if this theory were substantiated by experiment, the discovery might lead to some sublime and unconjectured secrets of science. For human Will, thus actively effective on the electric current, and all matter, animate or inanimate, having more or less of electricity, a vast field became opened to conjecture. By what series of patient experimental deduction might not science arrive at the solution of problems which the Newtonian law of gravitation does not suffice to solve; and-But I must not suffer myself to be led away into the vague world of guess, by the vague reminiscences of a knowledge long since wholly neglected, or half-forgotten. I was dissatisfied with my experiment. The needle stirred, indeed, but erratically, and not in directions which, according to the theory, should correspond to my movement. I was about to dismiss the trial with some uncharitable contempt of the French philosopher's dogmas, when I heard a loud ring at my street door. While I paused to conjecture whether my servant was yet up to attend to the door, and which of my patients was the most likely to summon me at so unseasonable an hour, a shadow darkened my window. looked up, and to my astonishment beheld the brilliant face of Mr. Margrave. The sash to the door was already partially opened; he raised it higher, and walked into the room. "Was it you who rang at the street door, and at this hour?" said I. I But presently those eyes, as quick as they were bright, glanced over the walls, the floor, the shelves, the phials, the mechanical inventions, and then rested full on my cylinder fixed to the table. He approached, examined it curiously, asked what it was? I explained. To gratify him, I sat down and renewed my experiment, with equally ill success. The needle, which should have moved from west to south, describing an angle of from 30 deg. to 40 or even 50 deg., only made a few troubled undecided oscillations. "Tut!" cried the young man, "I see what it is; you have a wound in your right hand." That was true. I had burnt my hand a few days before in a chemical experiment, and the sore had not healed. “Well,” said I, "and what does that matter ?" "Everything; the least scratch in the skin of the hand produces chemical actions on the electric current, independently of your will. Let me try." He took my place, and in a moment the needle in the galvanometer responded to his grasp on the cylinder, exactly as the French philosopher had stated to be the due result of the experiment. I was startled. "But how came you, Mr. Margrave, to be so well acquainted with a scientific process little known, and but recently discovered ?" "I well acquainted! not so. But I am fond of all experiments that relate to animal life. Electricity especially, is full of interest.” On that I drew him out (as I thought), and he talked volubly. I was amazed to find this young man, in whose brain I had conceived thought kept one careless holiday, was evidently familiar with the physical sciences, and especially with chemistry, which was my own study by predilection. But never had I met with a student in "Yes; and observing, after I had rung, that whom a knowledge so extensive was mixed up all the shutters were still closed, I felt ashamed with notions so obsolete or so crotchety. In one of my own rash action, and made off rather than sentence he showed that he had mastered some brave the reproachful face of some injured house- late discovery by Faraday or Liebig; in the next maid, robbed of her morning dreams. I turned sentence he was talking the wild fallacies of down that pretty lane-lured by the green of the Cardan or Van Helmont. I burst out laughing at chesnut-trees-caught sight of you through the some paradox about sympathetic powders, which window, took courage, and here I am! You for-he enounced as if it were a recognised truth. give me?" While thus speaking, he continued to move along the littered floor of the dingy room, with the undulating restlessness of some wild animal in the confines of its den, and he now went "No," he answered, with his merry laugh, on, in short fragmentary sentences, very slightly "it is not the teacher's fault. I am a mere linked together, but smoothed, as it were, into parrot; just cry out a few scraps of learning harmony by a voice musical and fresh as a sky-picked up here and there. But, however, I am lark's warble. "Morning dreams, indeed! dreams that waste the life of such a morning. Rosy magnificence of a summer dawn! Do you not pity the fool who prefers to lie abed, and to dream rather than to live? What! and you, strong man, "Pray tell me," said I, "who was your master in physics, for a cleverer pupil never had a more crack brained teacher." fond of all researches into Nature; all guesses at her riddles. To tell you the truth, one reason why I have taken to you so heartily is not only that your published work caught my fancy in the dip which I took into its contents (pardon me if |