JOSEPH FOURIER. 151 



movements of the heavenly bodies the elements of a fatnre geographical 

 map ; that the naturalist collected unknown plants, determined the 

 geological constitution of the soil, occupied himself with troublesome 

 dissections; that the anticpiary measured the dimensions of edifices; that 

 he attempted to take a faithful sketch of the fantastic images with which 

 everything was covered in that singular country, from the smallest 

 pieces of furniture, from the simple toys of children, to those prodigious 

 palaces, to those immense facades, beside which the vastest of modern 

 constructions would hardly attract a look. 



The two learned commissions studied with scrupulous care the mag- 

 iiificent temple of the ancient Tentyris, and especially the series of 

 iistronomical signs which have excited in our days such lively discus- 

 sions; the remarkable monuments of the mysterious and sacred Isle of 

 Elephantine; the ruins of Thebes, with her hundred gates, before which 

 (and yet they are nothing but ruins) our whole army halted, in a state of 

 ivstonishment, to applaud. 



Fourier also presided in Upper Egypt over these memorable works, 

 when the commander-in-chief suddenly quitted Alexandria, and returned 

 to France with his i)rincipal friends. Those persons then were very 

 much mistaken who, upon not finding our colleague on board the frigate 

 Muiron, beside Monge and Berthollet, imagined that Bonaparte did not 

 appreciate his eminent qualities. If Fourier Avas not a passenger, this 

 arose from the circumstance of his having been a hundred leagues from 

 the Mediterranean when the Muiron set sail. The explanation contains 

 nothing striking, but it is true. In any case, the friendly feeling of 

 Kleber toward the secretary of the Institute of Egypt, the influence which 

 he justly granted to him on a multitude of delicate occasions, amply 

 compensated him for an unjust omission. 



I arrive, gentlemen, at the epoch so suggestive of painful recollec- 

 tions, when the Agas of the janissaries, who had fled into Syria, having 

 despaired of vanquishing our troops so admirabl}' commanded by the 

 honorable arms of the soldier, had recourse to the dagger of the assassin. 

 You are aware that a young fanatic, whose imagination had been 

 wrought up to a high state of excitement in the mosques by a month of 

 prayers and abstinence, aimed a mortal blow at the hero of Heliopolis at 

 the instant when he was listening, without suspicion, and with his usual 

 kindness, to a recital of pretended grievances, and was promising redress. 



This sad misfortune plunged our colony iiito profound grief. Tbe 

 Egyptians themselves mingled their tears with those of the French 

 soldiers. By a delicacy of feeling which we should be wrong in sup- 

 posing the Mahometans not to be capable of, they did not then omit, 

 they have not since omitted, to remark, that the assassin and his three 

 accomplices were not born on the banks of the Nile. 



The army, to mitigate its grief, desired that the funeral of Kleber 

 should be celebrated with great i)omp. It wished, also, that on that 

 solemn day some person should recount the long series of brilliant 



