The Abduction of Avedick [pp. 414-433]

THE ABDUCTION OF AVEDICK.
a narrow rock, surrounded on all sides by the sea or by shifting
sands left uncovered when the sea retires at every tide. These
sands, extending to the firm ground, a distance of nearly two
miles, are rendered very dangerous by the emptying there of
several streams. Upon this rock, stamped with a wild grandeur,
some monks built in the eighth century a monastery, where they
lived isolated from the world, from which they were separated
sometimes by these vast strands and sometimes by the regularly
and oft-returning waters of the sea. It was thither, to that abbey of Mont St. Michael, occupied by Benedictines who consecrated themselves to alternate labor and prayer, that the Grand
Patriarch of the Armenians was conducted. The prior of the
abbey received orders to guard closely the prisoner brought him,
"without allowing him to communicate with any one, whether by
voice or pen"-a precaution yet very superfluous in the case of
an Armenian, whose tongue no one knew, who was himself ignorant of French, and who was among monks who, from the moment of his arrival, were taught to curse him. HIe was, in fact
represented to them as a detestable persecutor of the Catholics
-this man thrice exiled, twice deposed by them, torn violently
from his country, one while cast upon the coast of Syria and
shut up in a dungeon where the water penetrated, again conveyed across a foreign land a thousand. leagues from his home.
An object of horror to the monks, doubly exiled in this place of
exile, like them separated from the world by impassable obstacles and separated from them by the repulsion he inspired,
more unhappy than in his first prison, where at least he breathed
his country's air, Avedick could no longer preserve the hope of
deliverance. The consoling anticipation which his meeting with
Spartaly at Gena had permitted him to entertain he was compelled to renounce; for, supposing that his letters had reached
the Ottoman Porte, no one would think of coming to look for
him upon such a remote and desert coast. Far as his look
could extend, he could not expect a liberating vessel to appear.
Whether the sea covered again the strand or whether it retired
from it, there was the same frightful solitude, broken at intervals by the waves beating upon the rock or by the peaceful and
monotonous chants of the monks.
For ten months he heard their prayers without being allowed
to take part in them, and he lived in the most absolute isolation
1874.]
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