188 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP FRANCIS ARAGO. 



be, I repeat to you, taken to Admiral Collingwood." And he immedi- 

 ately gave orders to those vessels to set sail to the east. 



The frigate had already gone a little distance when she perceived 

 that we were steering toward Marseilles. Having then learnt from the 

 crews of the merchant vessels that we were ourselves laden with cotton, 

 she tacked about to seize us. 



She was very near reaching us, when we were enabled to enter the 

 port of the little island of Pomfegue. In the night she put her boats to 

 sea to try to carry us off; but the enterprise was too perilous, and she 

 did not dare attempt it. 



The next morning, 2d of July, 1809, I disembarked at the lazaretto. 



At the present day they go from Algiers to Marseilles in four days ; 

 it had taken me eleven months to make the same voyage. It is true 

 that here and there I had made involuntary sojourns. 



My letters sent from the lazaretto at Marseilles were considered by 

 my relatives and friends as certiiicates of resurrection, they having for 

 a long time past supposed me dead. A great geometer had even pro- 

 posed to the Bureau of Longitude no longer to pay my allowance to my 

 authorized representative ; which appears the more cruel inasmuch as 

 this representative was my father. 



The first letter which I received from Paris was full of sympathy and 

 congratulations on the termination of my laborious and perilous adven- 

 tures ; it was from a man already in possession of an European reputa- 

 tion, but whom I had never seen : M. de Humboldt, after what he had 

 heard of my misfortunes, offered me his friendshii). Such Avas the first 

 origin of a connection which dates from nearly forty-two years back, 

 without a single cloud ever having troubled it. 



M. Dubois Thainville had numerous acquaintances in Marseilles ; his 

 wife was a native of that town, and her family resided there. They 

 received, therefore, both of them, numerous visits in the parlor of the 

 lazaretto. The bell which summoned them, for me alone was dumb ; 

 and I remained as solitary and forsaken, at the gates of a town 

 peopled with a hundred thousand of my countrymen, as if I had been 

 in the heart of Africa. One day, however, the parlor bell rang three 

 times, (the number of times corresponding to the number of my room ;) 

 I thought it must be a mistake ; I did not, however, allow this to appear. 

 I traversed proudly under the escort of my guard of health the long 

 space which separates the lazaretto, properly so called, from the parlor, 

 and there I found, with very lively satisfaction, M. Pons, the director 

 of the observatory at Marseilles, and the most celebrated discoverer of 

 comets of whom the annals of astronomy have ever had to register the 

 success. 



At any time a visit from the excellent M. Pons, whom I have since 

 seen director of the observatory at Florence, would have been very 

 agreeable to me; but during my quarantine I felt it unappreciably 

 valuable. It proved to me that I had returned to my native soil. 



