“Now, is not this a most extraordinary tale you bring, Jean? Let us hope it is not true. Why, if it were true, that ruffian might escape and hide for days or weeks in the bayous around Barataria, even as Jean Lafitte did a hundred years ago.”
“Assuredly he might. Ah, I know it well, that country. But Jean Lafitte was no pirate, simply a merchant who did not pay duties. And he sold silks and laces cheap to the people hereabout—I could show you the very causeway they built across the marsh, to reach the place where he landed his boats at the heads of one of the great bays—it is not far from the plantation of Monsieur Edouard Manning, below New Iberia. Believe me, Monsieur, the country folk hunt yet for the buried treasure of Jean Lafitte; and sometimes they find it.”
“You please me, Jean. Tell me more of that extraordinary person.”
“Extraordinary, you may call him, Monsieur. And he had a way with women, so it is said—even his captives came to admire him in time, so generous and bold was he.”
“A daredevil fellow I doubt not, Jean?”
“You may say that. But of great good and many kindnesses to all the folk in the lower parts of this state in times gone by. Now—say it not aloud, Monsieur—scarce a family in all Acadia but has map and key to some buried treasure of Jean Lafitte. Why, Monsieur, here in this very café, once worked a negro boy. He, being sick, I help him as a gentleman does those negro, to be sure, and he was of heart enough to thank me for that. So one day he came to me and told me a story of a treasure of a descendant of Lafitte. He himself, this negro, had helped his master to bury that same treasure.”
“And does he know the place now? Could he point it out?”
“Assuredly, and the master who buried it now is dead.”
“Then why does not the negro boy go and dig it up again, very naturally?”
“Ah, for the best reasons. That old Frenchman, descendant of Jean Lafitte, was no fool. What does he in this burial of treasure? Ah! He takes him a white parrot, a black cat and a live monkey, and these three, all of them, he buries on top of the treasure-box and covers all with earth and grass above the earth. And then above the grave he says such a malediction upon any who may disturb it as would alone frighten to the death any person coming there and braving such a curse. I suggested to the negro boy that he should show me the spot. Monsieur, he grew pale in terror. Not for a million pounds of solid gold would he go near that place, him.”