In order to exhibit, under one point of view, the various administrative duties of our indefatigable colleague, I should have to show him to you on board the English fleet, at the instant of the capitulation of Menou, stipulating for certain guarantees in favour of the members of the Institute of Egypt; but services of no less importance and of a different nature demand also our attention.  They will even compel us to retrace our steps, to ascend even to the epoch of glorious memory when Desaix achieved the conquest of Upper Egypt, as much by the sagacity, the moderation, and the inflexible justice of all his acts, as by the rapidity and boldness of his military operations.  Bonaparte then appointed two numerous commissions to proceed to explore in those remote regions, a multitude of monuments of which the moderns hardly suspected the existence.  Fourier and Costas were the commandants of these commissions; I say the commandants, for a sufficiently imposing military force had been assigned to them; since it was frequently after a combat with the wandering tribes of Arabs that the astronomer found in the movements of the heavenly bodies the elements of a future geographical map; that the naturalist collected unknown plants, determined the geological constitution of the soil, occupied himself with troublesome dissections; that the antiquary measured the dimensions of edifices, that he attempted to take a faithful sketch of the fantastic images with which every thing was covered in that singular country,—­from the smallest pieces of furniture, from the simple toys of children, to those prodigious palaces, to those immense facades, beside which the vastest of modern constructions would hardly attract a look.

The two learned commissions studied with scrupulous care the magnificent temple of the ancient Tentyris, and especially the series of astronomical signs which have excited in our days such lively discussions; the remarkable monuments of the mysterious and sacred Isle of Elephantine; the ruins of Thebes, with her hundred gates, before which (and yet they are nothing but ruins) our whole army halted, in a state of astonishment, to applaud.

Fourier also presided in Upper Egypt over these memorable works, when the Commander-in-Chief suddenly quitted Alexandria and returned to France with his principal friends.  Those persons then were very much mistaken who, upon not finding our colleague on board the frigate Muiron beside Monge and Berthollet, imagined that Bonaparte did not appreciate his eminent qualities.  If Fourier was not a passenger, this arose from the circumstance of his having been a hundred leagues from the Mediterranean when the Muiron set sail.  The explanation contains nothing striking, but it is true.  In any case, the friendly feeling of Kleber towards the Secretary of the Institute of Egypt, the influence which he justly granted to him on a multitude of delicate occasions, amply compensated him for an unjust omission.