Morality, Legality, and Deception Theme Analysis

She made a step forward, uncertainly, and Martin, hearing it, turned and advanced upon her, his hands outstretched and a fearsome expression on his long, young face. He had disliked being married, and, in order to express his dislike of the affair, and also to express the power of his newly acquired sovereignty, he cuffed Bertrande soundly upon the ears, scratched her face and pulled her hair, all without a word.

Bertrande admitted the inflexible justice of Martin’s father, and regretted bitterly that she had fallen in with Martin’s plans for avoiding punishment. How much better if he had stayed and submitted! He would now be forgiven and all would be well.

[…]at times a curious fear assailed her, a fear so terrible and unnatural that she hardly dared acknowledge it in her most secret heart. What if Martin, the roughly bearded stranger, were not the true Martin, the one whom she had kissed farewell that noonday by the side of the freshly planted field? Her sin, if such indeed were a fact, would be most black, for had she not experienced an instinctive warning?

“my father was arrogant and severe. Just also, and loving, but his severity sent from home his only son. For eight years I have traveled among many sorts and conditions of men. I have been many times in danger of death. If I return to you with a greater wisdom than that which I knew when I departed, would you have me dismiss it, in order again to resemble my father? God knows, my child […] that a man of evil ways may by an act of will so alter all his actions and his habits that he becomes a man of good.”

But as time went on she found herself more and more surely faced with the obligation of admitting herself to be hopelessly insane or of confessing that she was consciously accepting as her husband a man whom she believed to be an imposter. If the choice had lain within her power she would have undoubtedly chosen to be mad.

She felt like one who has been condemned to solitude, whether of exile or of prison. All the circumstances of her life, the instruction of the church, her affection for her children and her kindred rose up about her in a wall implacable as stone, invisible as air, condemning her to silence and to the perpetuation of a sin which her soul had learned to abhor.

[…] Bertrande could not but admit that this man was wise, subtle, and, if not learnèd, infinitely skilled in argument. The priest valued him, the children loved him, and these virtues of his which entrenched him with those who should have supported her, but made her the more bitter against him. Passionate as had once been her love for this stranger, so passionate became her hatred of him, and her fear.

“At last,” she cried suddenly in a strange hoarse voice, “at last, dear God, Thou wilt save me!”

She pressed her hands to her temples, then turned, and ran from the room.

“Go with her,” said Martin, his face immediately full of concern. “Go with her quickly, my sister. Do you not see? She is ill.” To the priest he said, “You understand to what a pass it has come? I would give half my farm if this soldier from Rochefort had never come to Luchon. This will unsettle her reason.”

But this time the sun shone from the east, as it should do, and Bertrande marveled that she had ever felt confused about the direction. In the same fashion she marveled that she should have permitted herself to be deceived concerning the identity of the man who had called himself her husband.

“I also found it curious, upon remarking the prisoner at sword practice with my son, that Martin Guerre should fence so awkwardly; he was known to be distinguished in the art.”

[…] A brief smile flitted across the face of one of the judges, and Bertrande, seeing it, exclaimed:

“You may smile, my lord, and my testimony may seem innocent to you and of small importance, but I swear by God and all His holy angels that this man is not my husband. Of that I am certain, although I should die for it.”

“Well, we shall inquire, Madame, we shall inquire,” said the justice.

Can you not see, it is in this love that he has wronged me most, that he has damned my soul? I have sinned, through him, and you will not understand it even long enough to give me absolution! No, Father, I cannot believe him to be other than the rogue, Arnaud du Tilh.

It would not be possible for her to appeal this decision. It waited for her, behind those doors, in the quality of a doom. […] She saw herself as borne forward helplessly on a great tide of misunderstanding and mischance to commit even a greater sin than that of which she had been afraid.

The return of Martin Guerre would in no measure compensate for the death of Arnaud, but knowing herself at last free, in her bitter, solitary justice, of both passions and of both men.