From Rome also the most earnest entreaties and the most pressing recommendations “to confine the prisoner still more closely”[317] reached Louis XIV. Twice did the Minister of Exterior Relations, the Marquis de Torcy, charge the Cardinal de la Trémouille to remove the inquietudes of the congregation of the Holy Office. “The orders to redouble attention and watchfulness,” wrote Torcy, “have been renewed. He is seen only by the person who gives him his food. They converse only by signs, and, when he hears mass on fête-days and Sundays, he is put in a place apart from all others.” At the same time,[318] the Minister informed the Cardinal that the Armenians, who had come to Marseilles, had departed again without being able to find any traces of Avedick. “We know,” he added,[319] “that the valet of the Patriarch is about to come from Leghorn to France, likewise with the view of discovering what has become of his master. But on his arrival he will be arrested and closely imprisoned.” These despatches were, we see, of a nature to entirely reassure the Holy Office,[320] and Louis XIV. showed himself as vigilant a guardian of Avedick’s person as he had been, through his ambassador, the principal author, and, in his despatches, the unreserved approver of the abduction. He went further still, and entering in his turn on that path of duplicity in which Ferriol had long since outstripped him, Louis XIV. wrote to his representative near the Porte: “It is impossible for us to satisfy the Grand Vizier’s demands with reference to Avedick. He is no longer in a state to be sent living to Constantinople.”[321] Louis XIV. added “that the news of his death had been given him, at the very moment when, in order to be agreeable to the Grand Vizier, he was having the Patriarch sought for in Spain and Italy with the view of delivering him up to his legitimate sovereign.”