A born actor, Arnaud had little difficulty in convincing the villagers that he was Martin. How did he fool Bertrande? How could a wife not know that the man she was living with was an impostor? Or did she know?

On September 16, 1560, in the small French village of Artigat in the foothills of the Pyrenees, an unusually large crowd gathered to witness the execution of a young peasant. He was neither a murderer nor a thief, but a man who had tried to pull off an audacious confidence trick – and had very nearly succeeded.

The affair had begun in the summer of 1556, when news reached Bertrande Guerre that her long-lost husband, Martin, was on his way home to Artigat. He had disappeared eight years earlier, after a visit to his native Spain, and his wife and family had not heard from him since.