water’s edge they drew the triggers, but all the four muskets hung fire:  a circumstance which was accounted for by the great humidity of the night.  The Nablousian threw himself into the water, and, swimming with great agility and rapidity, gained a ridge of rocks so far off that not a shot from the whole troop, which fired as it passed, reached him.  Bonaparte, who continued his march, desired me to wait for Kleber, whose division formed the rear-guard, and to tell him not to forget the Nablousian.  He was, I believe, shot at last.

We returned to Jaffa on the 24th of May, and stopped there during the 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th.  This town had lately been the scene of a horrible transaction, dictated by necessity, and it was again destined to witness the exercise of the same dire law.  Here I have a painful duty to perform—­I will perform it.  I will state what I know, what I saw.

I have seen the following passage in a certain, work:—­“Bonaparte, having arrived at Jaffa, ordered three removals of the infected:  one by sea to Damietta, and also by land; the second to Gaza; and the third to El-Arish!” So, many words, so many errors!

Some tents were pitched on an eminence near the gardens east of Jaffa.  Orders were given directly to undermine the fortifications and, blow them up; and on the 27th of May, upon the signaling given, the town was in a moment laid bare.  An hour afterwards the General-in-Chief left his tent and repaired to the town, accompanied by Berthier, some physicians and surgeons, and his usual staff.  I was also one of the party.  A long and sad deliberation took place on the question which now arose relative to the men who were incurably ill of the plague, or who were at the point of death.  After a discussion of the most serious and conscientious kind it was decided to accelerate a few moments, by a potion, a death which was inevitable, and which would otherwise be painful and cruel.

Bonaparte took a rapid view of the destroyed ramparts of the town and returned to the hospital, where there were men whose limbs had been amputated, many wounded, many afflicted with ophthalmia, whose lamentations were distressing, and some infected with the plague.  The beds of the last description of patients were to the right on entering the first ward.  I walked by the General’s side, and I assert that I never saw him touch any one of the infected.  And why should he have done so?  They were in the last stage of the disease.  Not one of them spoke a word to him, and Bonaparte well knew that he possessed no protection against the plague.  Is Fortune to be again brought forward here?  She had, in truth, little favoured him during the last few months, when he had trusted to her favours.  I ask, why should he have exposed himself to certain death, and have left his army in the midst of a desert created by our ravages, in a desolate town, without succour, and without the hope of ever receiving any?  Would he have acted rightly in doing so—­he who was evidently so necessary, so indispensable to his army; he on whom depended at that moment the lives of all who lead survived the last disaster, and who had proved their attachment to him by their sufferings, their privations, and their unshaken courage, and who had done all that he could have required of men, and whose only trust was in him?