(Pisa, 16 February 1809 – Paris, 10 October 1887), married on 11 March 1874 to Hyacinthe Delarue. His first years were spent in Italy, where his father was occupied with his consular duties. He was educated at the College of Henry IV in Paris. From the age of 18 years to 20 he was employed in the commissary department of the army. From 1825 to 1827 he acted as assistant vice-consul at Lisbon, where his uncle, Barthélemy de Lesseps, was the French chargé d'affaires. This uncle was an old companion of Jean-François de La Pérouse and the only survivor of the expedition in which La Pérouse perished. Barthélemy de Lesseps had left the expedition in Kamchatka to travel to St Petersburg overland. Career Diplomatic In 1828 Lesseps was sent as an assistant vice-consul to Tunis, where his father was consul-general. He aided the escape of Youssouff, pursued by the soldiers of the Bey, of whom he was one of the officers, for violation of the seraglio law. Youssouff acknowledged this protection given by a Frenchman by distinguishing himself in the ranks of the French army at the time of the French conquest of Algeria. Lesseps was also entrusted by his father with missions to Marshal Count Bertrand Clausel, general-in-chief of the army of occupation in Algeria. The marshal wrote to Mathieu de Lesseps on 18 December 1830: "I have had the pleasure of meeting your son, who gives promise of sustaining with great credit the name he bears." In 1832 Lesseps was appointed vice-consul at Alexandria. While the vessel, in which Lesseps sailed to Egypt, was in quarantine at the Alexandrian lazaretto, M. Mimaut, consul-general of France at Alexandria, sent him several books, among which was the memoir written upon the previously filled and abandoned Ancient Suez Canal, according to Napoleon Bonaparte's instructions, by the civil engineer Jacques-Marie Le Père, one of the scientific members of the French expedition. This work struck Lesseps's imagination, and was one of the influences that gave him the idea of constructing a canal across the African isthmus. Fortunately for Lesseps, Muhammad Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, owed his position in part to the recommendations made on his behalf to the French government by Lesseps himself, who was consul-general in Egypt when Ali was a colonel. Because of this, Lesseps received a warm welcome from the viceroy and became good friends with his son, Said