tarnished his fame on the Syren coast of Naples, his great opponent bent all the resources of a fertile intellect to retrieve his position, and even under the gloom of disaster threw a gleam of light into the dark continent.  While his adversaries were merely generals or admirals, hampered by a stupid education and a narrow nationality, Bonaparte had eagerly imbibed the new learning of his age and saw its possible influence on the reorganization of society.  He is not merely a general.  Even when he is scattering to the winds the proud chivalry of the East, and is prescribing to Brueys his safest course of action, he finds time vastly to expand the horizon of human knowledge.

Nor did he neglect Egyptian politics.  He used a native council for consultation and for the promulgation of his own ideas.  Immediately after his entry into Cairo he appointed nine sheikhs to form a divan, or council, consulting daily on public order and the food-supplies of the city.  He next assembled a general divan for Egypt, and a smaller council for each province, and asked their advice concerning the administration of justice and the collection of taxes.[108] In its use of oriental terminology, this scheme was undeniably clever; but neither French, Arabs, nor Turks were deceived as to the real government, which resided entirely in Bonaparte; and his skill in reapportioning the imposts had some effect on the prosperity of the land, enabling it to bear the drain of his constant requisitions.  The welfare of the new colony was also promoted by the foundation of a mint and of an Egyptian Commercial Company.

His inventive genius was by no means exhausted by these varied toils.  On his journey to Suez he met a camel caravan in the desert, and noticing the speed of the animals, he determined to form a camel corps; and in the first month of 1799 the experiment was made with such success that admission into the ranks of the camelry came to be viewed as a favour.  Each animal carried two men with their arms and baggage:  the uniform was sky-blue with a white turban; and the speed and precision of their movements enabled them to deal terrible blows, even at distant tribes of Bedouins, who bent before a genius that could outwit them even in their own deserts.

The pleasures of his officers and men were also met by the opening of the Tivoli Gardens; and there, in sight of the Pyramids, the life of the Palais Royal took root:  the glasses clinked, the dice rattled, and heads reeled to the lascivious movements of the eastern dance; and Bonaparte himself indulged a passing passion for the wife of one of his officers, with an openness that brought on him a rebuke from his stepson, Eugene Beauharnais.  But already he had been rendered desperate by reports of the unfaithfulness of Josephine at Paris; the news wrung from him this pathetic letter to his brother Joseph—­the death-cry of his long drooping idealism: