History of Vardan and the Armenian War

While they spent their leisure hours with various games, Mikael would withdraw to a corner of the classroom to read or study his lessons. His father, encouraged by his son’s great desire for learning, decides to send him to Paris so that he may follow the higher courses of the lyceum there.

The Mouradian School, where at the time many Armenian youths had received solid learning and knowledge according to the curriculum of the great French schools, received him into its bosom. With his noble character, intelligence, and self-contained disposition, as well as a pleasant appearance, Mikael immediately captured the affection of his tutors and the love and respect of his fellow students. Under the influence of tutors like Fr. Gabriel V. Aivazovsky, Fr. Raphael V. Treantz, and Fr. Ghevond Alishan, who loved him with a special tenderness and observed the development of his mind with great care, he progressed rapidly in his studies. He became well-versed in national literature, which he loved excessively, and studied with particular attention the history of ancient nations, as well as political sciences—the three elements that would constitute the stature of a statesman and learned man. He also studied the French and English languages, which he spoke and wrote without error. A general sadness prevailed in the school, which revealed the love that the tutors and students held for Mikael, when he left Paris in 1858 after receiving his certificate for higher studies after six years and returned to Constantinople.

But that urge which relentlessly pushed him to obtain new knowledge would not cease to act even within the quiet family life, so sweet after a long exile. Immediately, jurisprudence and the study of the Turkish, Persian, and Arabic languages followed the lyceum course and occupied all his time. In vain his mother would urge him to take a rest. "Mother, it is impossible to lose my hours. It is necessary that I become a man." That is the answer he gave his mother, while he was writing to one of his beloved tutors in Paris: "I am progressing gigantically in Turkish."