Bakri often came to the French Consulate to talk of our affairs with M. Dubois Thainville:  “What can you want?” said the latter, “you are an Algerine; you will be the first victim of the Dey’s obstinacy.  I have already written to Livorno that your families and your goods are to be seized.  When the vessels laden with cotton, which you have in this port, arrive at Marseilles, they will be immediately confiscated; it is for you to judge whether it would not better suit you to pay the sum which the Dey claims, than to expose yourself to tenfold and certain loss.”

Such reasoning was unanswerable; and whatever it might cost him, Bakri decided on paying the sum that was demanded of France.

Permission to depart was immediately granted to us; I embarked the 21st of June, 1809, on board a vessel in which M. Dubois Thainville and his family were passengers.

The evening before our departure from Algiers, a corsair deposited at the consul’s the Majorcan mail, which he had taken from a vessel which he had captured.  It was a complete collection of the letters which the inhabitants of the Baleares had been writing to their friends on the Continent.

“Look here,” said M. Dubois Thainville to me, “here is something to amuse you during the voyage,—­you who generally keep your room from sea-sickness,—­break the seals and read all these letters, and see whether they contain any accounts by which we might profit how to aid the unhappy soldiers who are dying of misery and despair in the little island of Cabrera.”

Scarcely had we arrived on board the vessel, when I set myself to the work, and acted without scruple or remorse the part of an official of the black chamber, with this sole difference, that the letters were unsealed without taking any precautions.  I found amongst them several dispatches, in which Admiral Collingwood signified to the Spanish Government the ease with which the prisoners might be delivered.  Immediately on our arrival at Marseilles these letters were sent to the minister of naval affairs, who, I believe, did not pay much attention to them.

I knew almost every one at Palma, the capital of Majorca.  I leave it to be imagined with what curiosity I read the missives in which the beautiful ladies of the town expressed their hatred against los malditos cavachios, (French,) whose presence in Spain had rendered necessary the departure for the Continent of a magnificent regiment of hussars; how many persons might I not have embroiled, if under a mask I had found myself with them at the opera ball!

Many of the letters made mention of me, and were particularly interesting to me; I was sure in this instance there was nothing to constrain the frankness of those who had written them.  It is an advantage which few people can boast having enjoyed to the same degree.

The vessel in which I was, although laden with bales of cotton, had some corsair papers of the Regency, and was the reputed escort of three richly laden merchant vessels which were going to France.