re has met
our eyes that can be concealed. Duty to France now requires that she
should be put in possession of the whole wealth of the island."

"Let France cultivate an honourable peace," said Toussaint, "and her
authorities will assuredly see the wealth of the colony spread over all
its fields, and amassed in every harbour. We can then present an
overflowing public treasury. That is all I have to offer: and it ought
to be enough."

Sabes did not press the point further, because he saw it would be
useless. But he and his companion were more and more persuaded of the
truth of their notion of what they had seen and heard, the more they
recalled the tales told at the Court of France of the plate, the gems,
the bullion and coin, and the personal ornaments which abounded, even in
the prosperous days of the old emigrants. Every one knew, too, that the
colony had been more prosperous than ever since. It is not known by
whom the amount of the hidden treasure was, at length, fixed at
thirty-two millions of francs. Sabes and Martin simply told their story
and their ideas to Leclerc, adding the information that Toussaint
L'Ouverture was an adept in dissimulation; that they had as nearly as
possible been deprived of this piece of insight, by the apparent
frankness and candour of his manners; and that, but for the boldness of
Sabes in pressing the affair of the buried treasure, they should
actually have quitted the negro chief, after an occasional intercourse
of nine weeks, without any knowledge of that power of dissimulation
which had been formerly attributed to him by those who, it now appeared,
knew him well, and which must be the guiding fact in all the
Captain-General's dealings with him. His cunning must be met by all the
cunning that Leclerc's united council could muster, or destruction would
lurk under the pretended pacification. Accordingly, the whole of
Leclerc's policy henceforth proceeded on the supposed fact of Toussaint
L'Ouverture being the prince of dissemblers.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

RECEDING.

Leclerc was eager to receive proposals of peace,--to owe a respite to
dissimulation itself, rather than continue the war, under his present
difficulties. It was weary work, keeping up a show before the eyes of
the blacks, when, of the twelve thousand soldiers whom he had brought
with him, five thousand had fallen in battle, and five thousand more
were in the hospitals. Twenty thousand had arrived within