The rest of that day was spent in continual strife and fierce fighting. The members of the Egyptian Institute who inhabited the house of Kassim-Bey, in a remote quarter of the city, had barricaded themselves, and fired on the mob like ordinary soldiers. They were at it the whole day until evening, when my father and his brave dragoons came and rescued them. News came at night that a convoy of sick men belonging to Régnier's division, on its way from Belbeys, had been butchered. Was Bonaparte really at Rondah, as all the official reports said? Or was he at his headquarters, as Bourrienne declared? Did he make fruitless attempts at the gates of Old Cairo, at the gate of the Institute? Could he only effect an entrance by the gate of Boulay towards six in the evening? Was he surrounded at his residence with no means of delivering himself? These questions still remain in obscurity; but it is a perfectly clear and patent fact that he took no part at all that first day, and I can call up living witnesses among the Egyptians[1] who will testify that they saw my father everywhere. The first orders from Bonaparte were put into execution about five in the afternoon. The sound of cannon roared through the principal streets, the noise of a battery of howitzers, placed on the Mokkan, a noise as of thunder, rare in Cairo, that terrified the insurgents. Resistance, which had been somewhat desultory and spasmodic in character until now, was increasing everywhere and taking more definite shape. Nightfall interrupted the struggle, for it is a point of religion with the Turks not to fight in the dark. Bonaparte availed himself of the night to make his plans. At sunrise the revolt was still alive, but the rebels were lost. A great number of them had taken refuge with their principal leaders in the great mosque of El-Heazao. My father received orders to go and attack them there, thus striking at the very heart of what remained of the insurrection. The doors were burst in with volleys of cannon; my father, urging his horse into a gallop, was the first to enter the mosque. A danger arose at the very threshold, for his horse encountered an obstacle in the way, a tomb about three feet in height, at which he stopped dead, reared, then, dropping his forefeet in front of the tomb, stood for an instant motionless, with bloodshot eyes and smoking nostrils. "The Angel! the Angel!" yelled the Arabs. Their resistance was but the struggle of despair in the case of a few, but with the greater number it was continued out of a spirit of fatalistic resignation, and their leaders shrieked "_Amhan!_" and surrendered. My father sought out Bonaparte to inform him of the fall of the mosque: he was already acquainted with the details of its capture, and, mollified by the treasure my father had sent him, he accorded him a gracious reception. "Good-day to you, my Hercules," he said. "So you have crushed the dragon?" And he held out his hand.