His only remaining relative, an uncle, recently appointed to a consulate in one of the important cities of Asia Minor, thought it best to take him with him in the capacity of a cadet. He hoped to divert him from his pious abstractions, to induce him to renounce his plans, and to lead him even to doubting, by the sight of those numerous sects of schismatic Christians who inhabit the east. The uncle was a philosopher.
But faith was more brightly kindled in the heart of the neophyte as he approached those holy places in which evangelical truths had borne their first branches and produced their most savory fruits. The summits of Taurus were for him illuminated by the lightnings of Tabor and Sinai. More than ever strengthened in his first calling, he wore hair-cloth beneath his diplomatic dress, and promised himself, should the occasion offer, to accomplish, in despite of his relative, a novitiate signalized by apostolic labors.
After having perfected himself in the Turkish and common Arabian languages, he went to Shivas and its environs, on a visit to the followers of the different dissenting churches—Armenians, Greeks, Maronites, Nestorians, Eutycheans and even Latin Catholics, separated from Rome only by the marriage of their priests. He went among them to effect conversions; he was more alarmed at their misery than their ignorance, and, like a true apostle, he returned among them less to preach to them than to succor them.
He was passing down the Red River one day, on a small skiff, which he had learned to manage in the eastern style, dreaming of the desert and of an hermitage in some Thebais, and was creating in the future an ascetic happiness, tempered with clear water, when the oar broke. His barque stranding, cast him upon a small spot, a delta, located as an island, between Kizil-Ermak and a regular ditch. Ferdinand was not a skillful swimmer, but, notwithstanding the usual sedateness of his thoughts, he was a good jumper. He measured with his eye the river and the ditch by turns, and the question being decided in favor of the latter, he crossed it at a bound. The ditch passed, he perceived a low wall, which had been hidden from his view by a thick copse of nopals and wild apricot trees. Had he jumped back, to regain his delta, it would have been at the risk of his neck, for he had now no room to take a start; and should he succeed, he would still have an impassable river before him.