They gazed a while longer on the culprit, whose gilded armor glistened in the sun, then the spectators divided themselves, little by little, into groups, and went their way home, chatting about the event. “Pooh! a horrid thing is death!” said the son of the peasant, as he continued his journey with his father. “In good faith, to hang one for not having succeeded in stealing a piece of armor, that’s expensive. What do you think?” “I wonder, I do, what they would have done to him if he had really stolen the armor?” “They would not have done anything to him, for if he had really stolen the armor he would have been able to escape from the château. Then, possibly, he would not have returned to be arrested.” “Yet he is punished more for a crime that he has not committed than he would have been if he had committed the crime!” “But he had the intention of committing it.” “And the intention was accounted as a fact--” “That is perfectly just.” “But it isn’t pretty to look at.” And since they found themselves on rising ground, the two companions turned to contemplate for the last time the silhouette of the unfortunate. Twenty minutes later they entered the little town where, save the mark! they were to receive certain moneys, and which they were to leave that evening in order to accomplish the return home that same night. On the morrow, at break of day, the guards sallied out from the château of La Piroche for the purpose of taking down the corpse of the hanging man, from which they intended to recover the armor of the Seigneur, but they discovered something which they had been far from anticipating, that is to say, the gibbet was there, as always, but the hanged man was not there. The two guards rubbed their eyes, believing themselves to be dreaming, but the thing was very real. No more hanged man, and naturally no more armor. And what was extraordinary, the rope was neither broken nor cut, but just in the condition it was before receiving the condemned. The two guards ran to announce this news to the Seigneur of La Piroche. He was not willing to believe it, and proceeded to assure himself of the truth of the facts. So puissant a seigneur was he that he was convinced the hanged man would reappear for him there; but he saw what all the rest had seen. What had become of the dead? For the condemned had certainly died the day before, before the eyes of the whole village. Had another thief profited by the night to get possession of the armor that covered the corpse? Possibly--but in taking the armor he would naturally leave the corpse, for which he had no use. Had the friends or relations of the culprit wished to give him Christian burial? Nothing impossible in that if it were not for the fact that the culprit had neither friends nor relations, and that people who had had religious sentiments like that would have taken the culprit and left the armor. That, then, was no longer to be thought of. What should one believe, then?