ADMINISTRATIVE TALENTS OF FOURIER. 397 



transformed into a banquet, seized every occasion of ex- 

 tolling among their countrymen the generosity of the 

 French. 



Fourier did not display less ability when our gen- 

 erals confided diplomatic missions to him. It is to his 

 tact and urbanity that our army is indebted for an offen- 

 sive and defensive treaty of alliance with Mourad Bey. 

 Justly proud of this result, Fourier omitted to make 

 known the details of the negotiation. This is deeply to 

 be regretted, for the plenipotentiary of Mourad was a 

 woman, the same Sitty Nefijah whom Kleber has immor- 

 talized by proclaiming her beneficence, her noble charac- 

 ter, in the bulletin of Heliopolis, and who moreover was 

 already celebrated from one extremity of Asia to the 

 other, in consequence of the bloody revolutions which 

 her unparalleled beauty had excited among the Mame- 

 lukes. 



The incomparable victory which Kleber gained over 

 the army of the Grand Vizier did not damp the energy 

 of the Janissaries, who had seized upon Cairo while the 

 war was raging at Heliopolis. They defended them- 

 selves from house to house with heroic courage. The 

 besieged had to choose between the entire destruction 

 of the city and an honourable capitulation. The latter 

 alternative was adopted. Fourier, charged, as usual, 

 with the negotiations, conducted them to a favourable 

 issue ; but on this occasion the treaty was not discussed, 

 agreed to, and signed within the mysterious precincts of 

 a harem, upon downy couches, under the shade of balmy 

 groves. The preliminary discussions were held in a 

 house half ruined by bullets and grape-shot ; in the cen- 

 tre of the quarter of which the insurgents valiantly dis- 

 puted the possession with our soldiers ; before even it 



