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.