The despatches interchanged between M. Waddington and Lord Salisbury are too well known even to need being quoted from. M. De Blovitz, the Paris correspondent of the “Times,” who was in Berlin at the time, gives the following account of the circumstances under which the now historical fiat of “Take Carthage” went forth from the lips of Prince Bismarck. “It is hard to say,” writes M. De Blovitz, “how France came to be convinced that at the Berlin Congress, Prince Bismarck invited M. Waddington to take Tunis. Probably it was the result of words which were passed from mouth to mouth, and got exaggerated at every repetition. What the Prince said was merely one of the sallies he sometimes indulges in, and to which he himself attaches no importance. He himself told me, ‘On first seeing Lord Beaconsfield, I said to him, You ought to have an understanding with Russia instead of thwarting her. You might leave her free at Constantinople, and yourselves take Egypt, which would compensate you for your complaisance. France would not be so vexed as may be imagined, and, in any case, Tunis or Syria might be given her as an equivalent!’ I took this at the time and still take it for a jest, but the Prince had previously spoken in the same strain to Lord Salisbury and M. Waddington. The former made no answer, because Prince Bismarck was then in the dark as to the Cyprus convention, while M. Waddington answered, what he afterwards publicly repeated, that France had no design on Tunis, but could not allow any other European Power to instal itself there, and thus imperil her Algerian possessions. Thereupon came the news of the Cyprus convention, on which the French press began attacking M. Waddington, asserting that the English occupation of Cyprus was a rebuff for French diplomacy. The Italian papers were still more excited, and blamed Count Corti for not returning from the congress with some island in his pocket. This was the starting- point of the Tunis question in Italy, and of conversations, not only between Lord Salisbury and M. Waddington, but between M. Waddington and Count Corti. M. Waddington declared throughout that France had no design of annexing Tunis, but would not tolerate any European neighbour there.”