The certificate of death, legalised by the French
ambassador in Switzerland, was not admitted
as proof by the Toulon judge, the only proof
received in France being an extract from the
register of burials. Now, at that time, it was
not usual to keep registers of burials in
Switzerland. This absurd and pedantic refusal had
afterwards its influence.

The Marine gained his point in being
permitted to work upon popular passion and
credulity. He was taken to Manosque, to Caille,
and to Rougon; his journey was one long
triumph. He made his entry into those places
between ranks of enthusiastic gossips who had
made up their minds to receive him as the
young De Caille. He himself recognised
several of the people present, addressing them
by name, and recalling circumstances of their
childhood. He gazed at the houses attentively,
inquiring the reason of alterations that had been
made during his absence. Evidently he had
prepared his ground. His secret visit to
Manosque should not be forgotten, nor his correct
knowledge of the outside of buildings, together
with his complete ignorance of their interior.

Throughout the long, long, legal controversy
which followed, attempts were repeatedly made
to gain over public opinion by exciting its
fanaticism. For instance, in a circular letter sent to
the clergy, we find: "You are entreated to have
prayers in your church in behalf of M. de Caille,
a gentleman of Provence, disavowed by his father
for having embraced the Catholic religion. . . .
This is an affair of religion, and the cause of
God himself."

At last on the fourteenth of July, 1806, six
years after its first hearing of the case, and after
fifty audiences dispersed over those six years,
the Court of Aix pronounced the following
strange judgment:

It dismissed the demands of Le Gouche,
Tardivi, and Consorts; it declared the said
Entrevergues to be the veritable Isaac Le Brun
de Castellane, the son of Scipion Le Brun
de Castellane, Sieur de Caille and de Rougon,
and of Judith Le Gouche, his father and
mother. It adjudged him all their goods and
heritages, with restitution of the fruits thereof
from the 16th of December, 1702, with damages,
to be assessed by experts. It allowed proceedings
to be taken against the Sieur Rolland (Ad-
vocate General to the Parlement of Grenoble)
and Consorts, for subornation of witnesses,
calumny, and corruption of domestics; and it
condemned the said Le Gouche, Tardivi, and
Consorts to all the costs.

The motives which led the Judges of Aix to
this decision seemed to be; first, that it was
useless to waste their time over the proofs of
the death of a man whom they had alive and
well before their eyes; secondly, that they
ought to give the benefit of any doubt to the
defendant, who was already in possession of the
disputed individuality; thirdly, that two
witnesses in the affirmative ought to be preferred
to a thousand witnesses in the negative. What a
specimen of sophism and of begging the question
to exhibit at the close of the vaunted age of
Louis the Fourteenth!

The Aix judgment had not yet gone forth to
the world, and M. de Boyer d'Aguille, who
was charged with its execution, had not yet
received his formal instructions, when the coarse
impostor for whom the Parlement of Provence
had just compromised its honour, hastened to
put his judges to shame by multiplied proofs
both of his folly and his infamy. At the very
beginning of August, Aix was surprised with
the news that the new Isaac de Caille was to
marry Mademoiselle Serry, of Toulon. Now
Madame Serry, the young lady's mother, was cousin
german to M. de Villeneuve, one of the Aix
judges, and nearly related to the above-named
M. de Boyer d'Aguille, the reporter of the case.
This circumstance explained the whole proceeding.
If the insolvent, Pierre Mège, had been able
to meet the heavy expenses of the lawsuit for
nearly seven years, it was because M. Serry had
supplied the funds, and his relations in the
Parlement of Provence had guaranteed the issue.

The marriage of the person whom we will
still call the Marine was celebrated with
suspicious haste, M. Serry having obtained a
dispensation exempting them from the publication
of banns. On the day when the marriage
contract was signed, the Marine gave his father-in-
law a claim on his property for the sum of
eighteen thousand livres. Once in possession,
the false De Caille pillaged, dissipated, sold,
the property thus wrested from the Rollands
and the Tardivis. He turned everything into
money, even the contents of the bee-hives. Nor
did he forget to pay the creditors of that poor
fellow, Pierre Mège, to whom he was under
such obligations.

The first effect of this unexpected marriage
was to call forth the claims of the Marine's old
accomplice, La Violette, the carpenter. At the
outset of his career, when De Muges and La
Violette were his only supporters, he had
promised the carpenter to marry his sister-
in-law, a Toulon shoemaker's daughter, and
to provide for his family. The banns had
even been published; but the Marine, while
under a cloud, had been obliged to defer the
project, and the favoured of the Parlement of
Provence remembered to forget it. A still
graver fault was his conduct at Manosque. In
spite of his fine promises, he lost no time in
expelling from the mansion there, the poor
inmates and the Sisters of La Charité. He had
also the upstart vanity—which must have
greatly disgusted his partisans—to have his
portrait engraved, with the legend in capitals,
"Isaac Le Brun de Castellane, Seigneur De
Caille et De Rougon, agé de 37 ans en 1707."
To this were appended half a dozen lines of
doggerel:

                  Capricious Fortune will'd to try
                  From early youth my constancy
                  Of birthright robb'd, I had to brave
                  A false consignment to the grave.
                  But Heav'n, the storm and tempest past,
                  Has brought me into port at last.