Note 1 — Chapter IX · FRIENDS IN NEED

Archag had never thought very much about his country. He loved it, to be sure, and pitied it, but that was all. Garabed, who was older and more reflective by nature, made him feel ashamed of his ignorance. He showed him Armenia, wasted by continual massacres, but yet alive; he described the deplorable condition of their fellow-countrymen, the better and more intelligent of whom had fled to America; he told him the story of the heroic siege of Zeitoun—how the town held out for seven months against the Turkish forces which had come to exterminate it; or again, of the great achievements of Andranick1 the revolutionary leader, who had dared resist the Kurds, and had been victorious.