The Abduction of Avedick [pp. 414-433]

THE ABDUCTION OF AVEDICK.
preter, an old man bent by adversity rather than by years, his
face furrowed with deep wrinkles, his eye almost quenched.
Having preserved in his costume some remains of the Armenian
dress, foreign in his language and bearing, sustaining his enfeebled body by aid of a stick, he attracted notice, and was followed by the popular gaze to the church of St. Sulpice, to which
he was attached as priest, and where he said mass every day.
It was the religious chief, the civil protector of several millions
of Armenians, the enemy of Ferriol and the Jesuits, the vanquished in the long strife against them. He did not long enjoy
his liberty. Ten months after he came out of the Bastile, July
24, 1711, he died, without relatives, without friends, having
asked and received the sacraments of that Romish Church
whose zealous missionaries had caused all his woes. Thus
ended his life, begun in obscurity and misery, continued upon
the patriarchal throne, studded with catastrophes, filled with
unhoped-for elevations and sudden falls, and completed in exile.
Louis XIV., exhausting precautions and pushing imposture
and derision to their farthest limits, had the lieutenant of police,
d'Argenson, draw up an act in which were certified the grief of
the king, on learning of this death, and the eagerness the monarch had shown in setting the prisoner at liberty as soon as the
stranger had been able to make his quality known. By a singular
euphemism Avedick was there styled disgracie; and Louis XIV.
declared that "he had never approved of the violent acts and
still less the crimes which, unknown to his Majesty, might have
been committed in Turkey against the person of the deceased."
This lying act was to be sent to Constantinople in case the
Porte should make a yet more threatening demand for Avedick.
But this sending was not necessary. Several changes of Grand
Viziers contributed to relax and render less urgent the demands.
At distant intervals the name of the ancient Patriarch still recurred in the conversations of the Ottoman prime minister and
the French ambassador; then little by little the Divan ceased
to concern itself with the matter. The remembrance of Avedick
was less deeply rooted there than in the grateful hearts of the
Armenians.
1874.]
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