ADMINISTRATIVE TALENTS OF FOURIER. 397 
transformed into a banquet, seized every occasion of ex- 
tolling among their countrymen the generosity of the 
French. 
Fourier did not display less ability when our gen- 
erals confided diplomatic missions to him. It is to his 
tact and urbanity that our army is indebted for an offen- 
sive and defensive treaty of alliance with Mourad Bey. 
Justly proud of this result, Fourier omitted to make 
known the details of the negotiation. This is deeply to 
be regretted, for the plenipotentiary of Mourad was a 
woman, the same Sitty Neficah whom Kléber has immor- 
talized by proclaiming her beneficence, her noble charac- 
ter, in the bulletin of Heliopolis, and who moreover was 
already celebrated from one extremity of Asia to the 
other, in consequence of the-bloody revolutions which 
her unparalleled beauty had excited among the Mame- 
lukes. 
The incomparable victory which Kléber gained over 
the army of the Grand Vizier did not damp the energy 
of the Janissaries, who had seized upon Cairo while the 
war was raging at Heliopolis. They defended them- 
selves from house to house with heroic courage. The 
besieged had to choose between the entire destruction 
of the city and an honourable capitulation. ‘The latter 
alternative was adopted. Fourier, charged, as usual, 
with the negotiations, conducted them to a favourable 
issue ; but on this occasion the treaty was not discussed, 
agreed to, and signed within the mysterious precincts of 
a harem, upon downy couches, under the shade of balmy 
groves. The preliminary discussions were held in a 
house half ruined by bullets and grape-shot ; in the cen- 
tre of the quarter of which the insurgents valiantly dis- 
puted the possession with our soldiers ; before even it 
