borrowing from a friend.'

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

SINGULAR PERSONAGE--A LARGE SUM--PAPA OF ROME--ARMENIANS--ROOTS OF
ARARAT--REGULAR FEATURES

The Armenian! I frequently saw this individual, availing myself of the
permission which he had given me to call upon him. A truly singular
personage was he, with his love of amassing money, and his nationality so
strong as to be akin to poetry. Many an Armenian I have subsequently
known fond of money-getting, and not destitute of national spirit; but
never another, who, in the midst of his schemes of lucre, was at all
times willing to enter into a conversation on the structure of the Haik
language, or who ever offered me 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 th