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 



