As to the now defunct Ministry (telegraphed M. De Blowitz on the 10th November to the _Times_), it might be styled the Roustan Cabinet, or the “Cabinet des Naïfs.” M. Ferry was simple enough to believe that M. Gambetta would accept office on the eve of the session, and would be forced to retain him in his Cabinet. He was simple enough to credit M. Roustan’s assurances that the subjugation of Tunis would be a military promenade. He is simple enough himself to believe, or expect the Chamber to believe, that the Marseilles financiers, from pure patriotism, rejected a bonus of half a million francs for the sale of the Enfida property, that France is stronger with Tunis on her hands than without it, and that expenditure has not been incurred without constitutional sanction, because the money has not yet been debited against any Parliamentary vote. M. Saint-Hilaire was simple enough to think Prince Bismarck egged on France in the Tunis Expedition out of pure friendliness, and he was simple enough to picture Tunis as about to become a perfect paradise under French patronage. General Farre is simple enough to believe, or at least to say, that soldiers do not get acclimatised in the field, and that the science of war consists in bringing back one set of raw levies and sending out another. The whole Cabinet were simple enough to think Parliament would regard the conclusion of the May Treaty on the eve of re-assembling after Easter, and the occupation of Kairwán on the eve of the meeting in October, as pure coincidences, not as theatrical strokes, analogous to an instalment of a novel, leaving off at a thrilling point. Nobody suspects the late Ministers of any dishonourable motives. Nobody imagines that they plunged into the Tunisian hornets’ nest from any complicity in Bourse speculations. Even their little artifices in accelerating the elections and meeting Parliament with a bulletin from Kairwán are matters for a smile rather than for grave reprehension. They have simply been the dupes of their own sanguineness, and perhaps of the craft of others. · · · · · · · · · · At Tunis, however, M. Roustan was pleased to consider the result of the vote on M. Gambetta’s order of the day as a personal victory of his own. Early on the following morning the “approval of the Tunisian Expedition” was placarded all over the city, and four days later, when the local Cleopatra returned to Tunis from a visit to Paris, the Bey’s gilded barge was made ready to convey her to the shore, while eager deputations represented both the legendary colony and the financial associations, and the Pro-Bey fondly believed that his position was now secure.