For four whole days Angelique wept and entreated her father, but in vain. She felt that he would be inflexible and that she must end by submitting to his wishes. She accepted: "Whichever you please, father. I love none of them. So I may as well be unhappy with one as with the other." Thereupon a fresh discussion ensued, as the duke wanted to compel her to make her own choice. She stood firm. Reluctantly and for financial considerations, he named d'Emboise. The banns were published without delay. From that moment, the watch in and around the castle was increased twofold, all the more inasmuch as Lupin's silence and the sudden cessation of the campaign which he had been conducting in the press could not but alarm the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendome. It was obvious that the enemy was getting ready to strike and would endeavour to oppose the marriage by one of his characteristic moves. Nevertheless, nothing happened: nothing two days before the ceremony, nothing on the day before, nothing on the morning itself. The marriage took place in the mayor's office, followed by the religious celebration in church; and the thing was done. Then and not till then, the duke breathed freely. Notwithstanding his daughter's sadness, notwithstanding the embarrassed silence of his son-in-law, who found the situation a little trying, he rubbed his hands with an air of pleasure, as though he had achieved a brilliant victory: "Tell them to lower the drawbridge," he said to Hyacinthe, "and to admit everybody. We have nothing more to fear from that scoundrel." After the wedding-breakfast, he had wine served out to the peasants and clinked glasses with them. They danced and sang. At three o'clock, he returned to the ground-floor rooms. It was the hour for his afternoon nap. He walked to the guard-room at the end of the suite. But he had no sooner placed his foot on the threshold than he stopped suddenly and exclaimed: "What are you doing here, d'Emboise? Is this a joke?" D'Emboise was standing before him, dressed as a Breton fisherman, in a dirty jacket and breeches, torn, patched and many sizes too large for him. The duke seemed dumbfounded. He stared with eyes of amazement at that face which he knew and which, at the same time, roused memories of a very distant past within his brain. Then he strode abruptly to one of the windows overlooking the castle-terrace and called: "Angelique!" "What is it, father?" she asked, coming forward. "Where's your husband?" "Over there, father," said Angelique, pointing to d'Emboise, who was smoking a cigarette and reading, some way off. The duke stumbled and fell into a chair, with a great shudder of fright: "Oh, I shall go mad!" But the man in the fisherman's garb knelt down before him and said: "Look at me, uncle. You know me, don't you? I'm your nephew, the one who used to play here in the old days, the one whom you called Jacquot.... Just think a minute.... Here, look at this scar...."