EXPEDITION TO EGYPT. 393 



dential information which had been imperiously traced 

 out to them. Upon the faith of words so vague, with 

 the chances of a naval battle, with the English hulks in 

 perspective, go in the present day and endeavour to enroll 

 a father of a family, a savant already known by useful 

 labours and placed in some honourable position, an artist 

 in possession of the esteem and confidence of the public, 

 and I am much mistaken if you obtain any thing else 

 than refusals ; but in 1798, France had hardly emerged 

 from a terrible crisis, during which her very existence 

 was frequently at stake. Who, besides, had not encoun- 

 tered imminent personal danger ? Who had not seen 

 with his own eyes enterprises of a truly desperate nature 

 brought to a fortunate issue ? Is any thing more wanted 

 to explain that adventurous character, that absence of 

 all care for the morrow, which appears to have been one 

 of the most distinguishing features of the epoch of the 

 Directory. Fourier accepted then without hesitation the 

 proposals which his colleagues brought to him in the name 

 of the Commander-in-Chief ; he quitted the agreeable 

 duties of a professor of the Polytechnic School, to go 

 he knew not where, to do he knew not what. 



Chance placed Fourier during the voyage in the ves- 

 sel in which Kleber sailed. The friendship which the 

 philosopher and the warrior vowed to each other from 

 that moment was not without some influence upon the 

 events of which Egypt was the theatre after the depar- 

 ture of Napoleon. 



He who signed his orders of the day, the Member of 

 the Institute, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in the 

 East, could not fail to place an Academy among the 

 means of regenerating the ancient kingdom of the Pha- 

 raohs. The valiant army which he commanded had barely 



17* 



