14 DECEMBER 1839, Page 2

The melancholy condition to which the French are reduced in

Africa by the activity of ABD•EL•KIDER, the stupid security of Marshal 'Vanan, (who, it is said, has been recalled) and the effects of a sickly climate on the troops, are topics of angry discus- sion in the Paris papers, varied only by the reports of fresh plots and discoveries of inferna1 machines. M. DURAND, editor of the Bonapartist paper the (apilole, has been again imprisoned ; and there are t we) versions of the cause of his arrest. It is said that he is implicated in a conspiracy with the Marquis DE CROUT-CHANEL- This is one story : another makes him the depository of documents explaining the Grenoble conspiracy against Louts the Eighteenth in 1816, then believed to have been concocted by the Napoleonists, but since suspected to have been instigated by Lours PHILIPPE ; it is to secure possession of these papers that DURAND has been ar- rested; and as he is not supposed to be sternly virtuous, the Court will probably have no great difficulty in dealing with him.

It should be mentioned, that while most men concur in the be- lief that a formidable conspiracy really exists against the established dynasty, there are others who consider the whole affair a mystifi- cation.