398 JOSEPH FOURIER. 
would have been possible to agree to the basis of a treaty 
of a few hours. Accordingly, when Fourier was prepar- 
ing to celebrate the welcome of the Turkish commissioner 
conformably to oriental usages, a great number of musket- 
shots were fired from the house in front, and a ball passed 
through the coffee-pot which he was holding in his hand. 
Without calling in question the bravery of any person, do 
you not think, Gentlemen, that if diplomatists were usu- 
ally placed in equally perilous positions, the public would 
have less reason to complain of their proverbial slow- 
ness ? 
In order to exhibit, under one point of view, the 
various administrative duties of our indefatigable col- 
league, I should have to show him to you on board the 
English fleet, at the instant of the capitulation of Menou, 
stipulating for certain guarantees in favour of the mem- 
bers of the Institute of Egypt; but services of no less 
importance and of a different nature demand also our 
attention. They will even compel us to retrace our 
steps, to ascend even to the epoch of glorious memory 
when Desaix achieved the conquest of Upper Egypt, as 
much by the sagacity, the moderation, and the inflexible 
justice of all his acts, as by the rapidity and boldness of , 
his military operations. Bonaparte then appointed two 
numerous commissions to proceed to explore in those 
remote regions, a multitude of monuments of which the 
moderns hardly suspected the existence. Fourier and 
Costas were the commandants of these commissions ; I say 
the commandants, for a sufficiently imposing military force 
had been assigned to them; since it was frequently after 
a combat with the wandering tribes of Arabs that the 
astronomer found in’ the movements of the heavenly 
bodies the elements of a future geographical map; that 
