Gabriel had already in these few weeks gathered a whole collection of valuable trophies inside his house. The search for them was his chief occupation here. Yet, till now, some reverence had protected him from climbing the hill of St. Thomas's ruin. (It was guarded by great copper-colored snakes, with crowns on their heads. Those who came sacrilegiously pilfering holy stones to build their houses found, as they carried them away, that the stones had grown into their backs, and so had to carry the load to the grave with them.) Who had told him that story? Once, in his mother's room (now Juliette's) old women had sat with curiously painted faces. Or was that only an illusion? Was it possible -- had his mother in Yoghonoluk and his mother in Paris been the same?

 

 

Gabriel had long since entered the dark wood. A steep, wide gully, which led on up to the summit, had been cut into the mountain slope. They called it the ilex ravine. While Bagradian was climbing this sheep-track, which forced itself painfully upwards, through thick undergrowth, he knew suddenly: I have reached the end of the provisional. Something decisive is going to happen.

 

 

 

 

Provisional? Gabriel Bagradian was an Ottoman officer in the reserve of an artillery regiment. The Turkish armies were fighting for dear life on four fronts. Against the Russians in the Caucasus. Against the English and Indians in Mesopotamia. Australian divisions had been landed in Gallipoli, to force the gates of the Bosporus in conjunction with the Allied fleets. The fourth army, in Syria and Palestine, was preparing a fresh onslaught on the Suez Canal. It needed superhuman efforts to keep all these four fronts unbroken. Enver Pasha, that deified war-lord, had sacrificed two whole army corps to his madly daring campaign in Caucasian snows. Nowhere had the Turks enough officers. Their war material was inadequate.

 

 

For Bagradian the hopes of 1908 and 1912 were extinguished. Ittihad, the Young Turkish "Committee for Unity and Progress," had only made use of the Armenians, and at once proceeded to break every oath. Gabriel had certainly no reason to give especial proof of his Turkish patriotism. This time things were different in every way. His wife was French. He would therefore have to take up arms against a nation he loved, to which he owed the deepest gratitude, to which he was allied by marriage. None the less he had reported in Aleppo at the district headquarters of his former regiment. It had been his duty. Any other course would have meant that he could be treated as a deserter. But, strangely, the colonel in charge had seemed in no need of officers. He had studied Bagradian's papers very closely and sent him away again.