74 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS ARAGO. 
tination, and that the brig was not permitted to set sail 
until the next day but one. 
Bakri often came to the French Consulate to talk of 
our affairs with M. Dubois Thainville: “ What can you 
want?” said the latter, “you are an Algerine; you will 
be the first victim of the Dey’s obstinacy. I have already 
written to Livorno that your families and your goods are 
to be seized. When the vessels laden with cotton, which 
you have in this port, arrive at Marseilles, they will be 
immediately confiscated ; it is for you to judge whether 
it would not better suit you to pay the sum which the 
Dey claims, than to expose yourself to tenfold and certain 
loss.” 
Such reasoning was unanswerable; and whatever it 
might cost him, Bakri decided on paying the sum that 
was demanded of France. 
Permission to depart was immediately granted to us ; 
I embarked the 21st of June, 1809, on board a vessel 
in which M. Dubois Thainville and his family were pas- 
sengers. 
The evening before our departure from Algiers, a 
corsair deposited at the consul’s the Majorcan mail, 
which he had taken from a vessel which he had cap- 
tured. It was a complete collection of the letters which 
the inhabitants of the Baléares had been writing to their 
friends on the Continent. 
“ Look here,” said M. Dubois Thainville to me, “ here 
is something to amuse you during the voyage,—you who - 
generally keep your room from sea-sickness,—break the 
seals and read all these letters, and see whether they con- 
tain any accounts by which we might profit how to aid 
the unhappy soldiers who are dying of misery and despair 
in the little island of Cabrera.” 
