churches of the metropolis; the
satisfaction of being appointed to eulogize such or such a public
personage. Well! nine years have hardly passed and you find him at the
head of the Institute of Egypt, and he is the oracle, the idol of a
society which counted among its members Bonaparte, Berthollet, Monge,
Malus, Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Conte, &c.; and the generals rely upon
him for overcoming apparently insurmountable difficulties, and the army
of the East, itself so rich in adornments of all kinds, would desire no
other interpreter when it is necessary to recount the lofty deeds of the
hero which it had just lost.

It was upon the breach of a bastion which our troops had recently taken
by assault, in sight of the most majestic of rivers, of the magnificent
valley which it fertilizes, of the frightful desert of Lybia, of the
colossal pyramids of Gizeh; it was in presence of twenty populations of
different origins which Cairo unites together in its vast basin; in
presence of the most valiant soldiers that had ever set foot on a land,
wherein, however, the names of Alexander and of Caesar still resound; it
was in the midst of every thing which could move the heart, excite the
ideas, or exalt the imagination, that Fourier unfolded the noble life of
Kleber. The orator was listened to with religious silence; but soon,
addressing himself with a gesture of his hand to the soldiers ranged in
battle array before him, he exclaims: "Ah! how many of you would have
aspired to the honour of throwing yourselves between Kleber and his
assassin! I call you to witness, intrepid cavalry, who rushed to save
him upon the heights of Koraim, and dispelled in an instant the
multitude of enemies who had surrounded him!" At these words an electric
tremor thrills throughout the whole army, the colours droop, the ranks
close, the arms come into collision, a deep sigh escapes from some ten
thousand breasts torn by the sabre and the bullet, and the voice of the
orator is drowned amid sobs.

A few months after, upon the same bastion, before the same soldiers,
Fourier celebrated with no less eloquence the exploits, the virtues of
the general whom the people conquered in Africa saluted with the name so
flattering of _Just Sultan_; and who sacrificed his life at Marengo to
secure the triumph of the French arms.

Fourier quitted Egypt only with the last wreck of the army, in virtue of
the capitulation signed by Menou. On his return to France, the objec