As Commander-in-Chief of the French Army in Tunis, it becomes my duty to inform the tribes of this country that the French Government, as an ally of his Highness the Bey of Tunis has sent me here to restore tranquillity. Those who till now are in peace have nothing to fear. The French soldiers will interfere with nobody; but at the same time, a signal punishment will await those who rebel against the authority of the Bey, or endeavour to induce others to revolt against him. Given at the French Camp at Goletta, on this the 16th day of October 1881. (Signed) The Commander-in-Chief, SAUSSIER. The great door of the Kasbah looking into the Souk-el-Islam was still closed, not to be opened until General Lambert came into residence at the Dar-el-Bey. The untenanted shops might also have been utilised for the French garrison, as the tents among the scorpions and other reptiles which frequent the ruins of Spanish magnificence inside the citadel, are hardly habitable during the autumn rains. The transformation of the once Moslem city _par excellence_ of Barbary into a French garrison town is going on slowly but surely. Its inhabitants are now awakened by French bugle-calls; gendarmes are stationed at all the principal points, both within and without the walls; one police post after another is quietly vacated by its ragged Tunisian occupants and unobtrusively occupied by French soldiers; the General Commandant des Troupes Françaises dans la Circonscription de Tunis has rented a large house adjoining the Residency for a year, and the Archbishop of Algeria and Tunis has taken a five years’ lease of an eligible palace, and is building a Cathedral. The _cafés_ and hotels are full of French officers, both civil and military, and grandly dressed Algerian _goums_ drink their absinthe at the innumerable _buvettes_ which have sprung up in all directions as if by magic, and clank their swords on the pavement as if the annexation of the Regency to Algeria was already a _fait accompli_. The Jews rejoice in the occupation as a source of security and profit, the Italians detest it as a death-blow to all their hopes, the French and Maltese regard it with a feeling very much akin to relief, and the Arabs speak of it with bated breath; and although their belief in _kismet_ is strong, they still hope against hope that somehow or other the Sultan and Caliph will one day have his own again. CHAPTER XXXIII. AT SUSA IN THE SAHEL.