Asaad objected to the plan of rescuing him by consular authority, as it might endanger his life. He thought it best to await some providential opening for his escape. One soon occurred. After a week, he left the convent at midnight. The mountain paths were narrow, stony, and crooked, and he often found himself astray, stumbling over rocks and hedges, wading in brooks, or miring in mud. Reaching the sea-shore, he found a shelter under which he rested for a while, and then walked on to Beirut, where he was received most joyfully. The Patriarch and his train were engaged in morning prayers when Asaad's escape was announced. There was great excitement. One man among them, who had sympathized with Asaad, ventured to speak out in his justification. "You had reason," he said, "to expect nothing else. Why should he stay with you here? What had he here to do? What had he to enjoy? Books he had none; friendly society none; conversation against religion abundant; insults upon his opinions and feelings abundant. Why should he not leave you?" Messengers were sent in quest of him in every direction, but in vain. Asaad's written account of his experiences during his absence on the mountains, is very interesting, but there is not room for even an abridgment of it.1 A few of the incidents may be noted. The chief object of the Patriarch was to induce him to say, that his faith was like that of the Romish Church. This he declined doing, as it would be a falsehood. The Patriarch offered to absolve him from the sin of falsehood, to which Asaad replied, "What the law of nature condemns, no man can make lawful." Accompanied by a priest, he visited his own college of Ain Warka, but gained no light; and the same was true of his visit to the superior of the convent of Bzummar, who desired to see him. It is a suggestive fact, that the infallibility of the Pope, even then, was everywhere a controverted point between him and the priesthood. The weakness of the reasoning on the papal side was everywhere so apparent to him, as greatly to strengthen his evangelical faith. In one of his interviews with the Patriarch he said: "I would ask of you the favor to send from your priests two faithful men to preach the Gospel through the country; and I am ready, if necessary, to sell all I possess and give it towards their wages." He afterwards offered to go himself and preach the Gospel. But neither of these proposals was accepted. 1 See _Missionary Herald_ for 1827, pp. 71-76, 97-101. He was at length deprived of his books, and severely threatened by the Patriarch. "Fearing," he says, "that I should be found among the fearful (Rev. xxi. 8), I turned, and said to him, 'I will hold fast the religion of Jesus Christ, and I am ready, for the sake of it, to shed my blood; and though you should all become infidels, yet will not I;' and so left the room."