They began to suspect that the expedition had been undertaken for some merely scientific purposes; and when, on any alarm, they were ordered to open the square and give the learned party safe footing within, they used to receive them with military jeerings.

"Room for the asses:--stand back, here come the _savans_ and the _demi-savans_." On the 21st of July the army came within sight of the Pyramids, which, but for the regularity of the outline, might have been taken for a distant ridge of rocky mountains.

While every eye was fixed on these hoary monuments of the past, they gained the brow of a gentle eminence, and saw at length spread out before them the vast army of the beys, its right posted on an entrenched camp by the Nile, its centre and left composed of that brilliant cavalry with which they were by this time acquainted.

Napoleon, riding forwards to reconnoitre, perceived (what escaped the observation of all his staff) that the guns on the entrenched camp were not provided with carriages; and instantly decided on his plan of attack.

He prepared to throw his force on the left, where the guns could not be available.