As yet no hitch has taken place in the arrangements, and a speedy arrival before Kairwán is confidently anticipated. As yet not a single shot has been fired. In another chapter I shall take my readers in company with General Étienne’s column from Susa to Kairwán. CHAPTER XXXV. RECRIMINATIONS AND EXECUTIONS. The ten days which elapsed between the occupation of the city of Tunis and the start of the columns for Kairwán were peculiarly unhappy for all parties to the Tunisian Question. Public opinion in France became day by day more alive to the grim humour of the situation, and it was difficult to tell whether General Farre or M. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire came in for the greater share of sarcasm and abuse. The Ministers were in constant trepidation as to whether the Arabs would allow them to serve up the taking of Kairwán as a second _plat de la gloire_ at the opening of the Chambers, and M. Camille Pelletan was busy at Tunis laying bare the profligate corruption of the Roustan _entourage_ for future use in the tribune and the witness-box. Typhoid fever and dysentery were decimating the French ranks at Manouba and the Goletta, and the pleasant palace of General Kheir-ed-Din on the shores of the Mediterranean, which the Société Marseillaise had gratefully placed at the disposal of Madame Elias Musalli in the halcyon days of the Protectorate, was now converted into a fever hospital, and was affording the most damning statistics for the able pen and caustic criticism of M. Le Faure. The “Epoca” kept all Italy in continued merriment over French tribulation in Tunis, and the Italians began to see in the increasing perplexities of their neighbours in Africa the Nemesis of Marseilles. At Tunis itself matters were hardly less complicated than at Paris; the Bey had lost Mustapha and his capital, and would not be consoled, and the obstinacy of despair had taken the place of the complacency of the conquered. The demands of M. Roustan were now met with threats of abdication, and it became evident that unless Mustapha was restored to his arms, the machinery of the Protectorate would soon come to a deadlock. Meanwhile Taib Bey had declared war against M. Roustan, and was fast creating a powerful party in his own favour. The Minister Resident now learned the inexpediency of playing with the folly and vanity of a weak man: Frenchmen in Tunis were divided pretty evenly into the Sadekians and Taibians, and waged a relentless war against each other of invective and personality. While M. Roustan was employed in reassuring M. Saint-Hilaire, cajoling the Bey, and fighting the Taibist faction, the real influence at the Bardo Palace fell into the hands of General Musalli, under whose auspices a channel of circumlocution was devised which beggars all description; and it will hardly be believed that in describing it, I am speaking in sober seriousness of a country enjoying the inestimable blessings of a mission