Fortunately for the surgeon and his accomplice, they had only one patient—­the chevalier—­in their house when the descent was made.  When the chevalier’s room was reached, the first thing which the officers of the law remarked were the hat, spurred boots, and sword of the patient.  Claude Perregaud hardly looked up as the room was invaded; he only made a sign to those—­who came in to be quiet, and went on dressing the wound.  Completely taken in, the officer in command merely asked the name of the patient and the cause of the wound.  La Constantin replied that it’ was the young Chevalier de Moranges, nephew of Commander de Jars, who had had an affair of honour that same night, and being sightly wounded had been brought thither by his uncle hardly an hour before.  These questions and the apparently trustworthy replies elicited by them being duly taken down, the uninvited visitors retired, having discovered nothing to justify their visit.

All might have been well had there been nothing the matter but the wound on the chevalier’s sword-arm.  But at the moment when Perregaud gave it to him the poisonous nostrums employed by La Constantin were already working in his blood.  Violent fever ensued, and in three days the chevalier was dead.  It was his funeral which had met Quennebert’s wedding party at the church door.

Everything turned out as Quennebert had anticipated.  Madame Quennebert, furious at the deceit which had been practised on her, refused to listen to her husband’s justification, and Trumeau, not letting the grass grow under his feet, hastened the next day to launch an accusation of bigamy against the notary; for the paper which had been found in the nuptial camber was nothing less than an attested copy of a contract of marriage concluded between Quennebert and Josephine-Charlotte Boullenois.  It was by the merest chance that Trumeau had come on the record of the marriage, and he now challenged his rival to produce a certificate of the death of his first wife.  Charlotte Boullenois, after two years of marriage, had demanded a deed of separation, which demand Quennebert had opposed.  While the case was going on she had retired to the convent of La Raquette, where her intrigue with de Jars began.  The commander easily induced her to let herself be carried off by force.  He then concealed his conquest by causing her to adopt male attire, a mode of dress which accorded marvellously well with her peculiar tastes and rather masculine frame.  At first Quennebert had instituted an active but fruitless search for his missing wife, but soon became habituated to his state of enforced single blessedness, enjoying to the full the liberty it brought with it.  But his business had thereby suffered, and once having made the acquaintance of Madame Rapally, he cultivated it assiduously, knowing her fortune would be sufficient to set him straight again with the world, though he was obliged to exercise the utmost caution and reserve in has intercourse with her, as she on her side displayed none of these qualities.  At last, however, matters came to such a pass that he must either go to prison or run the risk of a second marriage.  So he reluctantly named a day for the ceremony, resolving to leave Paris with Madame Rapally as soon as he had settled with his creditors.