He had read the romance of Monte Christo, few French sailors have not, the immortal story that has become part of the history of the world was recalled by him here, lost and alone on the desolate islet of whose existence the great Dumas had never dreamed.
But it gave him little help. He had lived his life in a more sordid prison than that which held Edmund Dantès for fourteen years. That black cell of the Château d’If had been illuminated by the mind of Faria; the profound intelligence of the Abbé had given the future count not only his treasure, but the genius and the worldly knowledge which enabled him to dispose of it and turn it to account. Gaspard had no such teaching to guide him. The more he thought of the matter the more did his perplexity increase. The world of a sudden seemed to him peopled with robbers, antagonists, men who would take from him by fraud, or law, the thing which was at once his dream and his possession.
The curse of the imaginative mind came on him with full force, the faculty that had once caused a ghost to haunt him on the islet now filled the world with living people and each person an enemy. He pictured men whom he had never seen, not men of his own class, but men dressed as well-to-do citizens, merchants, and so forth, all sworn enemies to him and eager for his treasure. He had once been in a law court, called as a witness in a shipping disaster case; he saw that court now, and the three judges, he was standing before them and they were questioning him.
“Well, where did you get these things? Come, now, they are not yours; you do not find these things in a stokehold.”
He sweated at the thought.
Sagesse had spoken of taking the stuff to America; he knew nothing of America. Martinique was the only place he could take it to, the only place he wanted to reach, and, at once, the remembrance of Martinique brought up the image of M. Seguin. Ah! That was the solution. M. Seguin would help him. He had all the worldly knowledge necessary.
For a moment he was satisfied with this way out of the difficulty, and he began to doubt—not to doubt, exactly, but to hold up M. Seguin’s image before his mind’s eyes and to question it. “You are a reliable man, I know that, for you are universally respected in St. Pierre; but this treasure—look you, it is enormous, and remember, it is all mine; I don’t want to give anyone half shares; I just want some one to turn it into money, letting them take a good profit on the transaction, certainly, but not letting them rob me; would you do this for me? Could I trust you?”
The mental image of M. Seguin, after the fashion of images, made no reply. That hatful of gems, those blazing diamonds, furious rubies, saint-tempting sapphires, all that coloured temptation, who was there in the world that might not yield to it? Only one person that he knew—surely—Marie.
Ah! Could she have peddled them with her other wares, how gladly he would have cast them into her lap without count or toll, but she of all people in the world was most useless for his purpose.
He rose and paced the sands with Fortune, like the Old Man of the Sea, on his back; even in his walk up and down the desolate beach he was tethered by his treasure, for he dared not go far from that magnetic bundle lying by the palm bole; it was absurd to feel uneasy, he knew that; there was no person here to steal it; all the same, it held him close to it.