152 JOSEPH FOURIER. 



actions which will transmit the name of the illnstrious general to the 

 remotest posterity. By unanimous consent this honorable and perilous 

 mission was confided to Fourier. 



There are very few individuals, gentlemen, who have not seen the 

 brilliant dreams of their youth wrecked one after the other against the 

 sad realities of mature age. Fourier was one of those few exceptions. 



In effect, transport yourselves mentally back to the year 1789, and 

 consider what would be the future prospects of the humble convert of St. 

 Benoit-sur-Loire. No doubt, a small share of literary glory ; the favor of 

 being heard occasionally in the churches of the metropolis; the satis- 

 faction of being appointed to eulogize such or such a public personage. 

 AVell, 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, Mains, 

 Geoflfroy St. Hilaire, Conte, &c. ; and the generals rely upon him for 

 overcoming apparently insurmountable difiiculties, 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 mag- 

 nificent 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 everything 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 

 Avould have aspired to the honor 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 nndtitude of enemies who had surrounded him!" At these words 

 an electric tremor thrills throughout the whole army, the colors droop, 

 the ranks close, the arms come into collision, a deep sigh escapes from 

 some ten thousand breasts torn by the saber and the bullet, and the 

 voice of the orator is drowned amid sobs. 



A few mouths after, upon the same bastion, before the same soldiers, 

 I'ourier celebrated with no less eloquence the exploirs, the virtues, of 

 the general whoni the i^eople 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 arras. 



Fourier quitted Egypt only with the last wreck of the army, in virtue 

 of the capitulation signed by Menou. On hi* return to France the 



