nations by the time this letter reaches you." Now it was into the hands of a Government which could write such letters as the above, that my father, a Republican general, was to fall, when he left Egypt on account of his devotion to the Republic, which was threatened, as he thought, by Bonaparte's personal ambition. And at what a moment, too! When the head of that Government had been defeated on all sides by a mere handful of French troops, chased from his kingdom on the mainland, and obliged to retire to Palermo; carrying in his train feelings of bitter hatred and anger and vows of vengeance, such as always accompany defeat, and fill the minds of the vanquished with desperate and deadly resolutions. We shall now see how Prince Belmonte-Pignatelli put in practice upon my father and his unfortunate companions the precepts enjoined by him upon his colleague, the Chevalier Riocca, minister of the King of Piedmont. I will leave my father himself to relate the story of this terrible captivity; his voice shall rise from a tomb closed for forty-five years, and, as did the voice of Hamlet's father, shall denounce the crime and the murderers to the whole world. [Footnote 1: All those who took part in the Egyptian campaign are so called.] CHAPTER VI Report presented to the French Government by Divisional-General Alexandre Dumas, on his captivity at Taranto and at Brindisi, ports in the Kingdom of Naples. "We left the port of Alexandria on the evening of the 17th Ventôse, year VII, on board the _Belle Maltaise_, with General Manscourt, citizen Dolomieu and many other French military men and civil servants attached to the Egyptian Army, all furnished with leave on furlough from General Bonaparte. I hoped, if the winds favoured us, and with the aid of our excellent sailing vessel, to escape the English fleet and to reach some port in France in about ten or twelve days. That hope was all the better founded as the Maltese captain who commanded the boat (his name was Félix) declared that after some repairs of trifling importance it could hold out against the roughest weather. We had discussed together the price of these repairs, and he had estimated them at sixty louis. I gave him a hundred. I had therefore good reason to believe that these repairs had been conscientiously carried out: unfortunately they were not. "We had hardly got outside the harbour before the sea was against us, and a high wind buffeted us about from the first night. When day appeared, after a stormy night, we found that our vessel leaked. "We were already forty leagues from Alexandria; and, as the wind was not favourable, we could not turn the ship's head round for Egypt; we therefore decided to continue our course and to crowd on as much sail as possible.