[634] "Mais enfin, que voulez vous? C'est une mode de destitution propre à ce pais-là!"—S.—"I told him, that whatever might be the mode of deposition practised in Russia, luckily the south of Europe was a stranger to such treacherous habits and attempts; but my arguments could not convince him; he gave vent to his passion in ejaculations, stampings of the foot, and short fits of rage. I never beheld so striking a scene."—Fouché, tom. i., p. 205.
[635] The remains of Kleber were interred with great pomp, and a monument was raised to his memory. Buonaparte evinced sincere regret at the loss of this excellent officer, and caused a medal to be struck upon the occasion, with the words "General Kleber, born in 1753, assassinated at Cairo, the 14th of June, 1800;" and on the reverse, "Surnamed, from his stature and intrepidity, the French Hercules; he braved death a thousand times in the field, and fell under the dagger of an assassin." Kleber and Desaix were Napoleon's favourite lieutenants. "Both," he said, "possessed great and rare virtues, though their characters were very dissimilar. Kleber's was the talent of nature: Desaix's was entirely the result of education and assiduity: Kleber was an irreparable loss to France; he was a man of the brightest talents and the greatest bravery."
[636] His body was embalmed and brought by the French savans from Egypt, to be deposited in the museum of natural history at Paris.
[637] Montholon, tom. i., p. 78; Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo, vol. i., p. 243; Las Cases, tom. i., p. 226.
[638] Henry Dundas, created in 1802, Baron Duneira and Viscount Melville, died in May, 1811.
[639] At an after period, the good King made the following acknowledgment of his mistake. When Lord Melville was out of power, his majesty did him the honour to visit him at Wimbledon, and partook of some refreshment. On that occasion the King took an opportunity to fill a glass of wine, and having made the company do the same, he gave as his toast, "The health of the courageous minister, who, against the opinion of many of his colleagues, and even the remonstrances of his king, had dared to conceive and carry through the Egyptian expedition."—S.
[640] For a copy of the Convention, see Annual Register, vol. xliii., p. 221.
[641] "Napoleon never ceased to repeat, that Egypt ought to have remained in the possession of the French, which, he said, would infallibly have been the case, had the country been defended by Kleber or Desaix."—Las Cases, tom. i., p. 230.—"However great was the displeasure of the first consul at what had taken place, not an expression of ill-humour escaped him against any one. He showed at all times a marked preference for those who formed a part of the army of Egypt, with the exception of a few officers who had made themselves conspicuous by their bad spirit and ingratitude; and the only revenge he took on these was to forget them altogether."—Duke of Rovigo, vol. i., p. 251.
[642] General Law of Lauriston was born at Pondicherry in 1768. He died at Paris in 1828.
[643] Montgaillard, tom. v., pp. 470, 476; Jomini, tom. xv., p. 17. "For six weeks," says Fouché, "the ministry was busily engaged in collecting and transcribing the registers in which the suffrages for the consulship for life were inscribed. Got up by a special committee, the report presented 3,568,185 votes in the affirmative, and only 9074 in the negative. On the 2d August, a senatus consultum, called organic, conferred the perpetual power on the First Consul Buonaparte; and on the 15th, the anniversary of his birth, solemn prayers were offered up to God for having, in his ineffable bounty, granted to France a man who had deigned to consent to bear the burden of supreme power for his whole life."—Tom. i., p. 236.