"My father's? How can that be? He was always a poor man."
"His own fault, Jean, when he had a treasure like this. You, I hope, will not be so foolish. It is yours, as I have said. Be so good as to take it away."
"But why did not my father take it?"
"Why? Why? How do I know? Because, because your father was the biggest damn fool that I have ever known. He was a fool, I say, and I was another. We were two fools, two drivelling idiots. Be wise, Jean, and ask no more questions. It is good gold, yellow gold, coin of the realm, receivable for all debts, bankable anywhere in the world, of unquestioned value. What more do you want?"
"Only one question, Monsieur Gamache. Why then did my father refuse to take it?"
"Peste!" exclaimed Michel, stamping his foot. "This is the old man again, a chip from the old block; yes, the old blockhead himself. Well, if you will have it, I will tell you. It was a treasure that we found in the hulk of a ship half-buried in the sands of Anticosti. There were no names, no papers, only the bones of some men along the shore with some fragments of clothing--that was all. The wreck we burned; the bones we buried in the sand; and the gold we took to Ste. Famille on the Isle of Orleans--that is to say, it was I who took it?"
"And my father?"
"Refused to take it--would not touch a single piece."
"No?"
"No! Because, as he said, they were smugglers or pirates, those men who had been cast away; and the gold was the reward of robbery, or the price of blood. Yes, he said, in the very words that you have used, that it was devil's gold. He would have given it to the Church, that the altar might sanctify the gift, as he said; but I would not. No, and I left it buried for forty years. Devil's gold? What folly! Yes, he was a valiant man, that Toussaint Giroux, a valiant man and a trusty friend; but obstinate as a mule."