400 JOSEPH FOURIER. 
delicate occasions, amply compensated him for an unjust 
omission. } 
I arrive, Gentlemen, at the epoch so suggestive of 
painful recollections, when the Agas of the Janissaries 
who had fled into Syria, having despaired of vanquishing 
our troops so admirably commanded, by the honourable 
arms of the soldier, had recourse to the dagger of the 
assassin. You are aware that a young fanatic, whose 
imagination had been wrought up to a high state of 
excitement in the mosques by a month of prayers and 
abstinence, aimed a mortal blow at the hero of Heliopolis 
at the instant when he was listening, without suspicion, 
and with his usual kindness, to a recital of pretended 
grievances, and was promising redress. 
This sad misfortune plunged our colony into profound 
grief. The Egyptians themselves mingled their tears 
with those of the French soldiers. By a delicacy of 
feeling which we should be wrong in supposing the 
Mahometans not to be capable of, they did not then 
omit, they have not since omitted, to remark, that the 
assassin and his three accomplices were not born on the 
banks of the Nile. 
The army, to mitigate its grief, desired that the funeral 
of Kiéber should be celebrated with great pomp. It 
wished, also, that on that solemn day, some person should 
recount the long series of brilliant actions which will 
transmit the name of the illustrious general to the re- 
motest posterity. By unanimous consent this honourable 
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. 
