e money to render into English the fables
of Z--- in the hope of astonishing the stock-jobbers of the Exchange with
the wisdom of the Haik Esop.

But he was fond of money, very fond. Within a little time I had won his
confidence to such a degree that he informed me that the grand wish of
his heart was to be possessed of two hundred thousand pounds.

'I think you might satisfy yourself with the half,' said I. 'One hundred
thousand pounds is a large sum.'

'You are mistaken,' said the Armenian, 'a hundred thousand pounds is
nothing. My father left me that or more at his death. No, I shall never
be satisfied with less than two.'

'And what will you do with your riches,' said I, 'when you have obtained
them? Will you sit down and muse upon them, or will you deposit them in
a cellar, and go down once a day to stare at them? I have heard say that
the fulfilment of one's wishes is invariably the precursor of extreme
misery, and forsooth I can scarcely conceive a more horrible state of
existence than to be without a hope or wish.'

'It is bad enough, I daresay,' said the Armenian; 'it will, however, be
time enough to think of disposing of the money when I have procured it. I
still fall short by a vast sum of the two hundred thousand pounds.'

I had occasionally much conversation with him on the state and prospects
of his nation, especially of that part of it which still continued in the
original country of the Haiks--Ararat and its confines, which, it
appeared, he had frequently visited. He informed me that since the death
of the last Haik monarch, which occurred in the eleventh century, Armenia
had been governed both temporally and spiritually by certain personages
called patriarchs; their temporal authority, however, was much
circumscribed by the Persian and Turk, especially the former, of whom the
Armenian spoke with much hatred, whilst their spiritual authority had at
various times been considerably undermined by the emissaries of the Papa
of Rome, as the Armenian called him.

'The Papa of Rome sent his emissaries at an early period amongst us,'
said the Armenian, 'seducing the minds of weak-headed people, persuading
them that the hillocks of Rome are higher than the ridges of Ararat; that
the Roman Papa has more to say in heaven than the Armenian patriarch, and
that puny Latin is a better language than nervous and sonorous Haik.'

'They are both dialects,' said I, 'of the language of Mr. Petulengro, one
of