402 JOSEPH FOURIER. 
I call you to witness, intrepid cavalry, who rushed to 
save him upon the heights of Koraim, and dispelled in 
an instant the multitude of enemies who had surrounded 
him!” At these words an electric tremor thrills through- 
out the whole army, the colours droop, the ranks close, 
the arms come into collision, a deep sigh escapes from 
some ten thousand breasts torn by the sabre and the 
bullet, and the voice of the orator is drowned amid sobs. 
A few months after, upon the same bastion, before the 
same soldiers, Fourier celebrated with no less eloquence 
the exploits, the virtues of the general whom the people 
conquered in Africa saluted with the name so flattering 
of Just Sultan ; and who sacrificed his life at Marengo 
to secure the triumph of the French arms. 
Fourier quitted Egypt only with the last wreck of the 
army, in virtue of the capitulation signed by Menou. 
On his return to France, the object of his most constant 
solicitude was to illustrate the memorable expedition of 
which he had been one of the most active and most use- 
ful members. The idea of collecting together the varied 
labours of all his colleagues incontestibly belongs to him. 
I find the proof of this in a letter, still unpublished, 
which he wrote to Kléber from Thebes, on the 20th 
Vendémiaire, in the year VII. No public act, in which 
mention is made of this great literary monument, is of an 
earlier date. The Institute of Cairo having adopted the 
project of a work upon Egypt as early as the month of 
Frimaire, in the year VIII., confided to Fourier the 
task of uniting together thé scattered elements of it, of 
making them consistent with each other, and drawing up 
the general introduction. 
This introduction was published under the title of 
Historical Preface: Fontanes saw in it the graces of 
