entailed a very serious interruption in his plans, as well as in those of his political superiors. First came the risings at Sfax, Gabes, and Jerba, of which I have already spoken at length. On the 4th July, information reached Tunis that the Arabs near Monastir had already defied the Bey’s authority, and had murdered three Europeans in a neighbouring village. The same evening the French Captain Mattei was assassinated close to the Bey’s palace and the Manouba camp. His murderer managed to escape, but an innocent Arab paid the penalty of the crime. The unfortunate boy, who was shot by mistake, is buried in the ditch near which he fell, and his mother is a raving lunatic in the Arab madhouse. The complications, however, did not seem to disturb at once the unlimited power wielded by M. Roustan. It was just now that he interfered to prevent the sale of landed property by an English subject to French bankers, because his consent was not previously obtained to the transaction. The matter was denied at the time, but the fact rests on the testimony of M. Valensi, the representative of the legendary French colony, and the zealous framer of chronic addresses in favour of M. Roustan, and who himself telegraphed to this effect to the would-be purchaser. Every day the news of some fresh accession to the ranks of the rebels reached the Bardo. On the 18th July, while the Bey was listening to the details of the capture of his “faithful town of Sfax,” a band of 800 men belonging to the Zlass tribe, carried off 2000 of the royal camels from their pasture-lands, not two miles from the Manouba camp and the Kasr- es-Said gardens. A posse of Arab cavalry entered Kairwán and collected _vi et armis_ the public taxes, while another party invaded the Enfida and settled for themselves the vexed question of Hanafee and Melaki, by driving everybody out of it. Raids on the farms surrounding Tunis now became of daily occurrence, and at this juncture the Prime Minister Mustapha hurried back to Tunis as fast as a despatch-boat could carry him. But the position grew daily more and more serious; the Tunisian soldiers who had cheered in the very presence of the French at each halting shot fired by the Bimbashi of Sfax, came back to their quarters at the capital only to desert. The Bey was now urged to adopt the very remedy which had been ridiculed by M. Roustan four months before. He was told to call out the native army and form “a camp,” but his power and influence were both hopelessly ruined, and he was regarded as a traitor and a coward by every honest man amongst his subjects. Even while M. Roustan and General Logerot were elaborating their plans of a Tunisian expedition, hundreds of the rough Arab soldiers were taking their road southwards, calling out to every one they met, “We will fight for Ali Ben Hlifa and the Sultan.” The truth could no longer be ignored; revolution and anarchy now prevailed both in Southern and Central Tunis.