While the great Ronalds-Wyse controversy had apparently absorbed the attention of France, and while the peculiar features of the Billing _régime_ were diverting even the Tunisians, Mr. Wood had not been idle. An English company had laid down a small railway joining Goletta to Tunis and the Bardo; an English bank had begun its operations, notwithstanding the anathema of M. De Vallat and the rest of the _corps consulaire_, and English capitalists were preparing to light the town of Tunis with gas. In the meantime the friends of M. Bonaparte-Wyse relaxed no effort to procure the removal of M. De Billing, and the rescue of Mrs. Ronalds’ offending partner from his uncomfortable quarters in the Bey’s common prison. The controversy between the Baroness and the Tunisian Premier hastened the inevitable end, and the Baron de Billing was somewhat abruptly recalled. Early in 1875 M. Théodore Roustan became Consul-General and Chargé d’Affaires of the French Republic at Tunis. M. Wyse was released to carry on his appeals in France, and study the projects for the Panama canal; Mrs. Ronalds left Tunis for ever, and the “improvements in the Tunisian breed of horses and cattle” at Sidi Tabet were for the moment forgotten. For a short time nothing in M. Roustan’s line of action betokened the coming storm, but already in 1875 his extraordinary intimacy with the Musalli family was violently attacked in the “Gazette du Midi,” and he was obliged to retain M. Pelletier, a local legal practitioner, to answer the exposures contained in that paper by a series of articles in the “Peuple.” Elias Musalli came to Tunis nearly five and thirty years ago as a soldier of fortune. He was a Copt by birth, had received a fair education in one of the Egyptian seminaries, and brought a recommendation from a high official at Constantinople. He became the protégé of the Prime Minister Mustapha, and rose to the position of Sub- Director in the Tunisian Foreign Office. Thirty years ago he married the Signora Louisa Traverso, an Italian lady, whose universal popularity materially assisted his progress. During the long administration of M. Roche and the short interregnum of M. Moulin, General Elias Musalli played a prominent part in the trials and difficulties of the Tunisian Government, and he rendered more or less valuable assistance to all the parties interested in the financial operations of 1863 and 1865. As a matter of course General Musalli became rich, and after the fashion of Tunisian grandees built himself a palace. At last, however, there came a French Chargé d’Affaires “who knew not Joseph,” and General Elias Musalli fell through the influence of General Kheir-ed-Din, and the hostility of MM. Villet and Botmiliau. His final dismissal was caused by an unfortunate mistake. M. Musalli had forgotten the exact amount of the Bey’s donation to a ball given for the benefit of the European hospitals, and advantage was taken of a discrepancy between the offering