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 Baléares 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