This prisoner, still sufficiently menacing and formidable at the bottom of his dungeon for Rome as well as Versailles to be thus concerned about his fate, this old man, the object of so many preoccupations, and, throughout the whole of the Levant, of regrets which he did not even have the consolation of knowing, was not thought to be sufficiently surely isolated by the sands and the sea that surround Mount Saint-Michel. The moats, the massive doors, and the towers of the Bastille were considered necessary. “On December 18, 1709,” says Dujonca in his journal, “there has entered a very important prisoner, whose name was not mentioned.”[322] This was Avedick, whose death, announced by Louis XIV., the majority of the Armenians had long since been mourning. The same recommendations which the Prior of Mount Saint-Michel had received were given to M. de Bernaville, governor of the State prison, and he was forbidden “to allow the slightest communication between his new prisoner and any other person.”[323] However, Louis XIV. was not slow in authorising an exception to this rule. A project, long since favoured by the King’s government, and the execution of which would render it for ever impossible for Avedick to return to Constantinople, was about to be realized. This was to instruct him in the Catholic religion, to determine him to submit to the authority of the Holy See, and thus to lead him to discredit himself with those of his co-religionists who still doubted of his death. Such was the end, for the accomplishment of which a monk had been placed near the Patriarch during the two years of his stay at Mount Saint-Michel. At the Bastille the suggestions became more pressing, and Armenian books were given to him,[324] in which he might learn the Catholic doctrines, and convince himself how narrow were the grounds of difference which separated the Latin Armenians from the schismatics. These he traversed, and, on September 22, 1710, he abjured between the hands of the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, by an instrument written in the Armenian language, three translations of which in Latin were delivered, one to the Cardinal, another to the Minister of Exterior Relations, and the third to Avedick himself.[325] A few days afterwards he was ordained priest in the church of Notre-Dame. This abjuration was the only means Avedick had of recovering his liberty; and, depressed by so many storms, he ceded, after five years of close captivity, to the natural desire of breathing a free air during the few remaining years that he had to live.
In the early part of 1711, an old man, bowed by adversity still more than by weight of years, his countenance furrowed by deep wrinkles, his eyesight nearly gone, might be seen every morning to leave a little house in the Rue Férou, where he dwelt with his interpreter.[326] Having preserved in his attire some remnant of the Armenian costume, being a foreigner in language and manners, and sustaining by the aid of a stick his enfeebled body, he attracted attention, and people followed him with their glances to the church of Saint-Sulpice, to which he was attached as priest, and where he every day said mass.[327] This was the religious chief and civil protector of several millions of Armenians, the enemy of Ferriol and of the Jesuits, and the vanquished in the long struggle sustained against them. He did not long enjoy his liberty, but died on July 21, 1711, ten months after having quitted the Bastille, without relations or friends, having demanded and received the consolations and the sacraments of that Roman Church[328] whose ardent missionaries had been the cause of all his misfortunes. Thus terminated this life, commenced in obscurity and misery, continued on the patriarchal throne, crossed with unhoped-for elevations and sudden falls, and completed mournfully in exile.
Louis XIV., exhausting precautions, and pushing imposture and mockery to their extreme limits, had an instrument drawn up by the Lieutenant of Police d’Argenson, in which were attested the King’s sorrow on hearing of this death, and the promptitude which the monarch had shown in giving liberty to the prisoner directly the foreigner had been able to make it understood what his quality was. By a singular euphemism, Avedick was termed a disgracié, and Louis XIV. declared that he had never approved the violence, and still less the crimes, which, unknown to his Majesty, had been committed in Turkey on the person of the deceased.[329] This lying document was to have been sent to Constantinople in case the Porte should reclaim Avedick in too menacing a manner. But it was unnecessary. Several changes of Grand Viziers contributed to abate the demands, and to render them less pressing. At long intervals the name of the ex-Patriarch recurred in the conversations between the Ottoman prime minister and the French ambassador;[330] then, by degrees, the Divan no longer occupied itself with it. The remembrance of Avedick was less profoundly engrafted there than in the grateful hearts of the Armenians.
But this is not the complete dénoûment of the drama. At the very time when Ferriol’s victim was dying, he himself was returning from Constantinople insane, having been, two years since, replaced in his post, which, with an extravagant pretension,[331] he had, however, up to that time refused to quit. It was, in some measure, necessary to use force to compel him to embark.[332] For a long time he had recognized the enormous fault he had committed, and on January 6, 1709, had written to Torcy, “I know only of one thing for which people can reproach me—it is the abduction of Avedick.”[333] But this was not the cause of his recall, which was evidently entirely due to the too certain signs of his insanity.[334] It cannot be denied that Louis XIV.[335] approved the violation of the law of nations, of which Avedick was the victim; and if the Catholic missionaries are responsible for having suggested this crime, as Ferriol is for the orders transmitted to Chio, the government of Louis XIV. is not the less so for having prolonged and aggravated its consequences by the treatment to which the prisoner was subjected.
FOOTNOTES:
[291] Order of Louis XIV., dated from Versailles, November 10, 1706:—Correspondance Administrative du Règne de Louis XIV., vol. iv. p. 255.
[292] Gallia Christiana, vol. xi. p. 310: “In confinio Britonum ac Normannorum, medio in mari.”
[293] Such as the Sée, Célune, and Coësnon.
[294] XVII. calend. Novembris, 709:—Gallia Christiana, vol. xi. p. 511.
[295] Letter from Louis XIV. to the Prior of Mount Saint-Michel, November 10, 1706:—Correspondance Administrative du Règne de Louis XIV., vol. iv. pp. 204 and 205.