latest phase of this rivalry is that of the French invasion. The Sultan was hardly satisfied with the Bey’s pecuniary assistance, and urgent demands arrived for men and horses. Just at this critical moment General Kheir-ed-Din was requested “to go to his house to repose himself, and return when the Bey had further need of his services.” The real causes of his downfall were the unbending and imperious manner he had adopted to his colleagues, his habit of telling in plain language wholesome truths to the Bey, and the silly ambition of the minion Mustapha Ben Ismael. The Turkish party in the Cabinet accused him of being too French, and the French themselves denounced him as fanatically Turkish. The former faction relied on an article in the _Jowaib_ which described him as preventing the despatch of a contingent to Stamboul, while M. Roustan never forgot his adventure of 1864 or forgave his bringing about the firman of 1871. In addition to this the views of M. Roustan and the Musallis would be best furthered by the vizirial mantle descending on the shoulders of a fool and a puppet. Kheir-ed-Din was neither one nor the other; Mustapha Ben Ismael was a combination of both. It was, however, impossible to promote Mustapha to the post, quite unfledged as he was in Oriental diplomacy, and General Muhamed Khaznadar, the Colonel Muhamed of the days of Ahmed Bey, was accordingly nominated as a stop-gap. Mustapha meanwhile received the appointments of Minister of Justice and Lord Privy Seal (Sahab Ettaba), and was also appointed to the Presidency of the Financial Commission. Mustapha is destined to play so important a _rôle_ in the annals of the French invasion that his history must be no longer neglected. Twenty years ago, a little boy in a tattered shirt and battered red cap, was often cuffed for somewhat too obtrusively picking up cigar ends in the European cafés of Tunis. A benevolent Maltese tavern-keeper gave him a suit of clothes, and for a few months he got more kicks than _bakhshish_ from his master’s customers. When tired of serving infidel wine-bibbers he became the apprentice of a barber, and then the servant of one of the officers of the Turkish Guard. This same little boy is Mustapha Ben Ismael, ex-Prime Minister of Tunis, Knight Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, Grand Cordon of the Crown of Italy, and Grand Cordon of the Civil Division of the Military Order of Spain. Muhamed es Sadek was the first to perceive his natural abilities, and transferred him from the service of the Turkish colonel to his own. Little more need be said of his career till we find him in 1877 Tunisian Lord Privy Seal, and by some peculiar fiction sometimes described as the Bey’s “son-in-law” and at others as his “adopted son.”