boat had just anchored at Santa Cruz bringing news that in consequence of some foreign complication a French squadron had been ordered to Tunis, and would probably go on to the East.  The Hercule was to join it immediately.  We tore down the mountain, rejoicing in the thought that we were most likely going to do some firing, and after a passage of twenty days, spent in all sorts of fighting drill, we cast anchor in the Bay of Tunis, only to have a bucket of cold water thrown over our heads.  The complications on which we had built a whole structure of danger and glory had passed away.  The squadron we were to have joined had departed, and orders awaited us to resume our interrupted cruise, and bear away for South America.  One piece of news was we were told was that the expedition which was to go and avenge our last year’s defeat at Constantine was fitting out at Bona, and that my brother Nemours commanded one of the brigades.  Now my big ship was to revictual at Algiers, and I besought the captain, who had a free hand, to touch at Bona and give me a chance of seeing my brother.  The passage from Tunis to Bona was delayed by calms, and when we got in, I found to my great regret that the expedition had started, but that a small column was being formed which was to join it, starting on the following morning.  At this news I rushed to my captain, and calling all the resources of persuasion and every wile of diplomacy to my aid, I strove to convince him that there would be time for me, during his revictualling, whereat I should be practically useless, to make a rush to the expeditionary force and get back again, and that if the King, my father, knew I had happened to be where I was, he would be much displeased at my turning my back on an enterprise which was to avenge our national honour.  There were no telegraph wires in those days, and I contrived to get the desired permission.  Twenty-four hours later I turned soldier for the nonce, and started off, mounted and accoutred and full of fresh dreams of glory, destined once more to disappointment—­a disappointment shared by various engineer and artillery officers and three Prussians, Messieurs von Willisen, [Footnote:  H. de Willisen, aide-de-camp to the Prince of Prussia, who afterwards became the Emperor William, was in chief command of the Holstein army.] von Noville, and Oelrichs, who had arrived too late to start with the expeditionary force, and, like myself, were endeavouring to rejoin it.  What shall I say about the march of the column to which I was attached upon Constantine?  It lasted over twelve days of fearful weather, during which no discomfort was spared us.  Torrents of rain, rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of the regiments in the column brought with it from France.  And we had the mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which was so sodden that no gun nor vehicle could get up it, even with triple teams, and listening to the firing of the attacking batteries before Constantine without being able to get there.