On the last day of 1881 M. Roustan returned to Tunis. A crowd of Algerian protegés hastened to Goletta to meet the conqueror, but all honest Frenchmen, and notably the military authorities, held aloof from so curious a demonstration. In this manner, the first year of the Protectorate closed with a very melancholy prospect for the future of this once peaceful country. The Bey’s power over his subjects was now reduced to the merest shadow; his administration had fallen into a state of hopeless confusion, while his available army was reduced to a corps of titular generals and colonels, who did nothing but wear magnificent uniforms, and draw their pay when they could get it. The collection of taxes had proved inadequate for the payment of the interest due on the national debt, and the wholesale desertion of their usual camping- grounds by the Bedouin Arabs was an ominous portent of coming famine and the pestilence which usually follows in its wake. The notables of Sfax were still offering in vain an interest of twelve per cent. for a loan to pay their share of the war indemnity, the indiscriminate levy of which elsewhere had hopelessly ruined a large proportion of the Tunisian tribesmen. Suspicions were afloat that the peace in the south would be of short duration, and the heavy rains had augmented the natural difficulties which met the French troops at every turn, and increased the mortality in the military hospitals. While all unity of feeling amongst the European residents was at an end, the French colony, split up into Taibists and Roustanites, presented notoriously the spectacle of a house divided against itself. To add to those troubles, the inopportune return of M. Roustan, in defiance of public opinion, now placed any attempt at a new departure beyond the range of possibilities. The very streets of the town seemed to share in the general chaos; they had become an impassable quagmire. Genuine trade was now at a standstill, and had been superseded by a brisk traffic in absinthe and vermouth. The _Café du Cercle_, frequented by generals and staff- officers, and the _Café du Kroumír_, the rendezvous of the honest _troupiers_, were doing a roaring business, but Ali Ben Saleh and Muhamed Ben Abdallah no longer came into Tunis to purchase their Manchester cloth and Nottingham calico. They had exchanged their cattle for guns and gunpowder, and were waiting on the frontier with Ali Ben Hlifa, for the long-expected advance of the Sultan and Caliph. This was the state of Tunisia when 1881 dropped into the years of history. While these pages have been passing through the press the Enfida case has ended. The Société Marseillaise has at last purchased Mr. Levy’s adjacent property, and at the same time his contingent right to the Enfida estate. Ten days later (June 11th) Mr. Levy died. CHAPTER XLV. 1882 AND THE FUTURE.