On May 24, the French were at Jaffa again. Here the hospitals were full of the plague-stricken and the wounded. Napoleon visited these men, spoke encouraging words to them, and, according to Savary, touched one of the victims of the plague in order to inspire confidence--the disease being one with whose spread imagination is said to have much to do. Bourrienne denies this story; but according to a report written by Monsieur d’Ause, administrator of the army of the East, and dated May 8, 1829, Napoleon not only touched the afflicted, but helped to lift one of them off the floor. Substantially to the same effect is the testimony of the chief surgeon of the army, Desgenettes. Bourrienne also denies that the sick were taken away by the retreating French. Monsieur d’Ause reports that the wounded and the sick were put on board seven vessels (he names the vessels), and sent by sea to Damietta. This statement is corroborated by Grobert, Commissioner of War, who gives the names of the officers placed in charge of the removal. A few of the plague-stricken were so hopelessly ill that Napoleon requested the surgeon to administer opium. It would put the poor creatures out of their misery, and prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Desgenettes made the noble reply which Napoleon himself quoted admiringly, “My duty is to cure, not to kill.” But Napoleon’s suggestion was really humane; as he says, any man in the condition of these hopeless, pain-racked invalids would choose the painless sleep of opium rather than the prolonged agony of the disease. In the year 1900 the Europeans, beleaguered by the Chinese in Tien-Tsin, adopted the view of Napoleon. They killed their own wounded to prevent them from falling into the hands of the heathen. According to reports published throughout Christendom and not contradicted, Admiral Seymour of the British Navy issued orders to that effect. And when the barbarities which the Christians inflicted upon the heathen became worse than death, Chinamen did as Seymour had done--killed their own friends to escape the torture. Napoleon not insisting on poison, the few invalids who could not be moved were left alive, and several of these yet breathed when Sir Sidney Smith took possession of Jaffa.