The month of December was only three days old when M. Roustan set out for Paris to do battle with M. Henri Rochefort. M. Ferry had three weeks before fallen a victim to the growing unpopularity of the Tunisian Expedition, and M. Léon Gambetta now reigned in his stead. Like a mysterious Hindu divinity, the great republican leader had long lived and prospered on the credit of his much delayed ministerial incarnation, and nobody trusted more fondly in his apparent omnipotence than M. Roustan and his friends. Ever since his famous vote on a side issue, which cut the Gordian knot of official perplexities concerning Tunis, M. Gambetta was regarded by the “no surrender” party in the Regency as the saviour of the Protectorate. M. Roustan hoped great things from the new Premier, and now began to adroitly use his well-known name as a sort of moral scarecrow to frighten the almost tamed Bey. But M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire had, in the simplicity of his heart, arranged a pitfall, which was not only destined to hopelessly trip up M. Roustan, but to materially aid the _descensus Averni_ of the Premier himself. It was precisely this snare of M. Saint-Hilaire’s contriving which now occasioned M. Roustan’s somewhat unexpected departure, leaving the French Residency for the second time to the intelligent care of M. Lequeux. Cheap glory was popular in France just as long as it remained cheap and no longer; when it cost something, its popularity vanished as if by magic. Ever since the almost simultaneous outbreak of Arab “fanaticism” and typhoid fever in July, everything savouring of Tunis seemed suddenly to become an object of hatred and ridicule. That ficklest of fickle goddesses, the French press, now boxed the compass in the most remarkable manner; and while the _Télégraphe_, the _France_, the _Clairon_, the _Radical_, the _Intransigeant_, the _Justice_, the _Presse_, the _Napoléon_, and the _Henri IV._ were bitterly attacking the more serious aspect of the new Punic War, and boldly denouncing it as a _guerre d’affaires_ or a _guerre de tripotages_, such papers as the _Comédie Politique_ were lashing its authors with the scourge of sarcasm and lampoon. The French are pre-eminently endowed with a keen sense of humour; when a cause becomes ridiculous in France it is lost, and this was the fate which befell the expedition to Tunis. While poor M. Ferry was trusting to the saving virtue of a timely triumph at Kairwán, and pronouncing a touching panegyric on the man “who held high the banner of France for seven years at Tunis,” the _Comédie Politique_ was sending broadcast over the country a cartoon, in which M. Rochefort as Bluebeard is represented in the act of killing the unfortunate _President du Conseil_, who cries piteously to the venerable M. Saint-Hilaire, looking anxiously through a telescope on a watch tower, “Sister Anne, sister Anne, cannot you see the capture of Kairwán?” and receives the answer, “All I can make out in the direction of Tunis is M.