reover one of excellent
policy. Our learned colleague, M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, to whom I am
indebted for this anecdote, has stated in fact that Soleyman and
Fayoumi, the principal of the Egyptian chiefs, whose punishment, thanks
to our colleague, was so happily transformed into a banquet, seized
every occasion of extolling among their countrymen the generosity of the
French.

Fourier did not display less ability when our generals confided
diplomatic missions to him. It is to his tact and urbanity that our army
is indebted for an offensive and defensive treaty of alliance with
Mourad Bey. Justly proud of this result, Fourier omitted to make known
the details of the negotiation. This is deeply to be regretted, for the
plenipotentiary of Mourad was a woman, the same Sitty Neficah whom
Kleber has immortalized by proclaiming her _beneficence_, _her noble
character_, in the bulletin of Heliopolis, and who moreover was already
celebrated from one extremity of Asia to the other, in consequence of
the bloody revolutions which her unparalleled beauty had excited among
the Mamelukes.

The incomparable victory which Kleber gained over the army of the Grand
Vizier did not damp the energy of the Janissaries, who had seized upon
Cairo while the war was raging at Heliopolis. They defended themselves
from house to house with heroic courage. The besieged had to choose
between the entire destruction of the city and an honourable
capitulation. The latter alternative was adopted. Fourier, charged, as
usual, with the negotiations, conducted them to a favourable issue; but
on this occasion the treaty was not discussed, agreed to, and signed
within the mysterious precincts of a harem, upon downy couches, under
the shade of balmy groves. The preliminary discussions were held in a
house half ruined by bullets and grape-shot; in the centre of the
quarter of which the insurgents valiantly disputed the possession with
our soldiers; before even it would have been possible to agree to the
basis of a treaty of a few hours. Accordingly, when Fourier was
preparing to celebrate the welcome of the Turkish commissioner
conformably to oriental usages, a great number of musket-shots were
fired from the house in front, and a ball passed through the coffee-pot
which he was holding in his hand. Without calling in question the
bravery of any person, do you not think, Gentlemen, that if diplomatists
were usually placed in equally perilous positions, the publ