Biographies of distinguished scientific men. First series

by F. Arago

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 Kléber 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.

I arrive, Gentlemen, at the epoch so suggestive of painful recollections, when the Agas of the Janissaries who had fled into Syria, having despaired of vanquishing our troops so admirably commanded, by the honourable arms of the soldier, had recourse to the dagger of the assassin. You are aware that a young fanatic, whose imagination had been wrought up to a high state of excitement in the mosques by a month of prayers and abstinence, aimed a mortal blow at the hero of Heliopolis at the instant when he was listening, without suspicion, and with his usual kindness, to a recital of pretended grievances, and was promising redress.

This sad misfortune plunged our colony into profound grief. The Egyptians themselves mingled their tears with those of the French soldiers. By a delicacy of feeling which we should be wrong in supposing the Mahometans not to be capable of, they did not then omit, they have not since omitted, to remark, that the assassin and his three accomplices were not born on the banks of the Nile.

The army, to mitigate its grief, desired that the funeral of Kléber should be celebrated with great pomp. It wished, also, that on that solemn day, some person should recount the long series of brilliant actions which will transmit the name of the illustrious general to the remotest posterity. By unanimous consent this honourable and perilous mission was confided to Fourier.

There are very few individuals, Gentlemen, who have not seen the brilliant dreams of their youth wrecked one after the other against the sad realities of mature age. Fourier was one of those few exceptions.

In effect, transport yourselves mentally back to the year 1789, and consider what would be the future prospects of the humble convert of St. Benoît-sur-Loire. No doubt a small share of literary glory; the favour of being heard occasionally in the churches of the metropolis; the satisfaction of being appointed to eulogize such or such a public personage. Well! nine years have hardly passed and you find him at the head of the Institute of Egypt, and he is the oracle, the idol of a society which counted among its members Bonaparte, Berthollet, Monge, Malus, Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Conté, &c.; and the generals rely upon him for overcoming apparently insurmountable difficulties, and the army of the East, itself so rich in adornments of all kinds, would desire no other interpreter when it is necessary to recount the lofty deeds of the hero which it had just lost.

It was upon the breach of a bastion which our troops had recently taken by assault, in sight of the most majestic of rivers, of the magnificent valley which it fertilizes, of the frightful desert of Lybia, of the colossal pyramids of Gizeh; it was in presence of twenty populations of different origins which Cairo unites together in its vast basin; in presence of the most valiant soldiers that had ever set foot on a land, wherein, however, the names of Alexander and of Cæsar still resound; it was in the midst of every thing which could move the heart, excite the ideas, or exalt the imagination, that Fourier unfolded the noble life of Kléber. The orator was listened to with religious silence; but soon, addressing himself with a gesture of his hand to the soldiers ranged in battle array before him, he exclaims: "Ah! how many of you would have aspired to the honour of throwing yourselves between Kléber and his assassin! I call you to witness, intrepid cavalry, who rushed to save him upon the heights of Koraïm, and dispelled in an instant the multitude of enemies who had surrounded him!" At these words an electric tremor thrills throughout the whole army, the colours droop, the ranks close, the arms come into collision, a deep sigh escapes from some ten thousand breasts torn by the sabre and the bullet, and the voice of the orator is drowned amid sobs.

A few months after, upon the same bastion, before the same soldiers, Fourier celebrated with no less eloquence the exploits, the virtues of the general whom the people conquered in Africa saluted with the name so flattering of Just Sultan; and who sacrificed his life at Marengo to secure the triumph of the French arms.

Fourier quitted Egypt only with the last wreck of the army, in virtue of the capitulation signed by Menou. On his return to France, the object of his most constant solicitude was to illustrate the memorable expedition of which he had been one of the most active and most useful members. The idea of collecting together the varied labours of all his colleagues incontestibly belongs to him. I find the proof of this in a letter, still unpublished, which he wrote to Kléber from Thebes, on the 20th Vendémiaire, in the year VII. No public act, in which mention is made of this great literary monument, is of an earlier date. The Institute of Cairo having adopted the project of a work upon Egypt as early as the month of Frimaire, in the year VIII., confided to Fourier the task of uniting together the scattered elements of it, of making them consistent with each other, and drawing up the general introduction.