Denis loved this place and found great comfort in the idea that most probably he would live out the last days of this life in the islands. He was grateful that Destiny had brought him here several years before.

He had been on his way to the colonies in the Americas to the south when a terrible storm had blown their ship of course. They had found shelter on this island where black africans from a shipwrecked slave ship a decade before lived peaceably side by side with a few indians and a small group of Breton whalers.

Although officially a colony of France, the island was insignificant enough to be left alone and the letters of introduction from the King of France and other European notables had been sufficient to convince the local authorities from St Vincent that Denis should be welcome in their land. Indeed, the Governor was somewhat proud to have Denis Weldone, the famous "Comte", as his guest. It was a secret well kept, because the rest of the world believed him dead several years before in Germany.

Denis had found peace here. His lifetime work to create colour dyes could continue and he had built a laboratory at the only fresh water spring on the island. The local plants and flowers supplied all the natural ingredients needed for his research and he was close to finishing a deep blue fabric dye which, in another era, would have made him a very rich man.

But now there were other priorities, other criteria. Long gone were the days when he had frequented all the royal courts of Europe, when he had entertained kings and queens with the stories of his travels in the East, when he had been respected and had seen riches beyond imagination.

All that was behind him now, he had found a certain inner peace and the puzzle of a lifetime all seemed to fall into place. The materiel trappings of modern society were insignificant now. Denis finally understood the full meaning of all that he had been taught by the monks on his last trip to the Himalayas twenty years earlier.

The sun was setting and Denis sat cross-legged on the porch of his house perched high on the island. Several times a day he would meditate like this, sometimes for hours on end. These were the moments of the day he preferred, because this island offered not only a simple life, not only an amalgam of all nature’s beauty, but some more.....it was a Gateway

A Gateway to another realm where time and space are irrelevant but where the souls of the living and the dead unite.