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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.
"I thank you," answered M. Dubois Thainville; "but I do not the less deplore this event that it will retard, indefinitely, perhaps, the settlement of the account in which I am engaged with the Dey." During this conversation, armed with a telescope, I was looking through the window of the dining-room, trying to persuade myself at least that the captured vessel was not one of much importance.
One day, at the beginning of the year, a dragoman came in the name of the Dey to beg M. Dubois Thainville to go without delay to the prison, where the friends of the French and their adversaries had involved themselves in a furious combat; and already several had fallen. The weapon with which they struck each other was the heavy long chain attached to their legs.
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.
"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."
Invested with full power by M. Dubois Thainville, I announced to the prisoners that they were about to be immediately given up to their Consul. I respected even the trick of the captain, who, wounded by several sabre-cuts, had contrived to cover up his head with his principal flag. I re-assured his wife; but my chief care was especially devoted to a passenger whom I saw with one arm amputated.
Such was the first origin of a connection which dates from nearly forty-two years back, without a single cloud ever paving troubled it. M. Dubois Thainville had numerous acquaintances in Marseilles; his wife was a native of that town, and her family resided there. They received, therefore, both of them, numerous visits in the parlour of the lazaretto.
In February, 1809, the new Dey, the successor of the "épileur," a short time after having entered on his functions, claimed from two to three hundred thousand francs, I do not remember exactly the sum, which he pretended was due to him from the French Government. M. Dubois Thainville answered that he had received the Emperor's orders not to pay one centime.
Scarcely had I arrived at Algiers, when I mentioned these two letters to M. Dubois Thainville, and begged him to send them to France by the first opportunity. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he at once answered me. "Do you know that you have behaved in this affair like a young inexperienced man, or, to speak out, like a blunderer?
To pass away the heavy time of a severe quarantine, the little Algerine colony was in the habit of going to an enclosure near the lazaretto, where a very beautiful gazelle, belonging to M. Dubois Thainville, was confined; she bounded about there in full liberty with a grace which excited our admiration.
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