On receiving the news of Avedick’s disappearance, the officers of the Divan and the Grand Vizier himself, justly excited, had demanded of Ferriol what had become of him. The French ambassador answered with assurance that the individual in question had not been given in charge to him, and that no doubt the vessel on board which he had been carried into exile was one of those English or Dutch corsairs which the Grand Seignior tolerated, even in the Dardanelles, to the prejudice of his custom-house officers and of the interests of his sovereignty.[302] This attempted diversion did not succeed for any length of time. English and Dutch, questioned in their turn, having no satisfactory reply to give, the Grand Vizier ordered torture to be applied to the _Chiaoux_ who had conducted Avedick to Chio; and in the midst of his torments the wretch avowed the whole truth.[303] The Vizier at once solemnly sent the _Chiaoux-Bachi_ to the French embassy in order to claim Avedick as a subject of the Grand Seignior. Maurocordato, the first interpreter of the Divan, presented himself a few minutes afterwards to join his demands to those of the _Chiaoux-Bachi_, and to insist that the abducted person should be immediately sent back to Constantinople. The preciseness and energy of the demand did not trouble Ferriol, and with great presence of mind he replied, “I am ignorant of all that has happened; and truly I cannot have any confidence in the depositions of the _Chiaoux_ charged to conduct Avedick. He declared, on returning to Constantinople, that he had been taken prisoner by a corsair. Who will say that the second deposition, made during the torments of the torture, is more accurate than the first? Moreover, if the French captain has carried off Avedick by force to Italy or France, he will be punished. But may it not be the case that the ex-Patriarch, fearing death in his third exile, has employed the captain to take him to a place of safety?” Little satisfied with this reply, Maurocordato threatened Ferriol, in the Sultan’s name, with general persecutions against the Armenian Catholics. “If Avedick is in France,” answered Ferriol, “I shall write with the view of his being compelled to return. But the Grand Seignior is master of his own subjects. He can have all the Armenians put to death indifferently, without any such threat being able to make me acknowledge that of which I am ignorant.”[304]