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 themselves 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 centre of the quarter of which the insurgents valiantly disputed the possession with our soldiers; before even it would have been possible to agree to the basis of a treaty of a few hours. Accordingly, when Fourier was preparing 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 usually placed in equally perilous positions, the public would have less reason to complain of their proverbial slowness? In order to exhibit, under one point of view, the various administrative duties of our indefatigable colleague, 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 members 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 the naturalist collected unknown plants, determined the geological constitution of the soil, occupied himself with troublesome dissections; that the antiquary measured the dimensions of edifices, that he attempted to take a faithful sketch of the fantastic images with which every thing was covered in that singular country,--from the