"When you arrive at headquarters," the relentless Barnett proceeded, "one of our agents will conduct you to the palace of Elfi Bey, where Madame Fourès has lived with Bonaparte since December 18, the date of your departure with the dispatches. As for your fellow-officers, they all know of the affair and you have become the object of the army's ridicule throughout Egypt. As a man of honour you will doubtless know how to avenge yourself on both culprits. Life is cheap in Egypt in these days, Captain." In due course Captain Fourès reached Cairo and soon realised that Barnett had told him nothing more than the truth. His wife remained a willing prisoner with Bonaparte. Accordingly he prepared for action, meaning to kill his two betrayers. It was pointed out to him that in view of the existence of martial law and his failure to carry the dispatches entrusted to him, the Commander-in-Chief would be justified in having him shot; while his friends urged, knowing the man's character, that, after all, to risk his career for a worthless woman, in a quarrel with a man like Bonaparte, was worse than madness. The Captain determined, however, to see his wife and obtain an avowal from her own lips as to the facts of the whole intrigue. According to the records, Fourès found her, still unrisen, at the mansion of Elfi Bey, learned from her own admission that she was satisfied with her present lot and, without further parley, flogged the strumpet till she writhed in agonies on her bedroom floor. Fatality of fatalities, who should enter and find her in this condition, but Bonaparte himself. He gazed for one dramatic moment at the shrieking woman and turned with a raucous laugh on his heel. Fourès, in due course, procured his divorce and made, as he himself declared, "a sacrifice of his resentment against Napoleon to France and the Army." As it happened, the luck was, on this occasion, against the British Secret Service agents. Had Bonaparte fallen a victim to the jealous rage of Fourès, should we have had a Trafalgar, an Austerlitz, a Jena, a Waterloo? There are not wanting those who maintain that all these historic events were in the inevitable logic of the French Revolution and that with a Bonaparte, or without him, they must in their due turn have come to pass—a question which is far too large for present discussion. In any case, it is certain that Bonaparte's removal in 1799 would have relieved many European cabinets of much anxiety. XIX CONCLUSION—BIBLIOGRAPHY