RIVAL PRINCES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 11, 14 January 1925, Page 13

RIVAL PRINCES.

FIGHT FOR CHATEAU. LITIGATION IX FRAXCE. History is .a treasury of little ironies. The case of the Chateau of Cbambord will rank among the moHt subtle. It is reported that, two heirs of the Bourbon Kings of France are suing the French Republic in it a own Courts for a chateau seized by the State because another Bourbon Friiice bore arms for Austria against France. Time plays strange tricks with ancient glories and loyalties and hostilities. One commentator confesses to a hope, if it lie not contempt of the Court at Blois. that the Princes Sixte and Xavier will be granted the ownership of Chambord. It is surely fitting that the chateau which is "the Versailles of the feudal monarchy" of Prance should be still a possession of the heirs of the last French dynasty. There are. indeed, peculiar historic reasons why in Republican France descendants of the Royal House should hold Chambord. It is "inevitably linked with the memory of that uncompromising head of tiie Bourbons who called himself Henri V., though lie never reigned. The Comte tie Chambord was the grandson of Charles X., and when he was a year old the French nation, through a subscription more or less organised by the Government, bought him the chateau. It had last belonged to Xapoleon's Chief of Staff. When his grandfather abdicated and fled in J«.io the Comte. a boy of 10 years old, went, ton. To the lust days of a life which ended in ISB3 he protested a faith in his Divine right which would have done honour to Louis XIV. When he might perhaps have come back to the throne after the collapse of IS7O. he took pains to declare that he would never endure the Tricolour. His flag was the hanner of white and golden lilies, "the flag of Henri IV.. Francis 1., and Joan °f Arc." He would make no terms, he Was the -necessary pilot" of France, '"dispensable to her safety. So France decided to dispense with "'in. But he had at least the grand Wanner, and perhaps Francis 1., for w hom t'liainbord was built, would have "Pproved his reckless royalty. The gallant King Francis, they say. bade the towers and pinnacles and lanters of Chambord rise "in the gloomy woods of Sologne," partly because he liked huntln g there, still "more because a fair lady o{ the neighbourhood was among his 'amiliars. Though several misguided men °f the eighteenth century set themselves t° improve the place, it'remains a won•ferful riot of caprice and wild invention, a monument of the wanton energy of that age when Fiance was drinking the lew wine of ihe Renaissance. What the *Wld out of which arose Rabelais was hke can be .-ecu at Chambord. It has ''Sown associations with literature, too. °" one of its windows King Francis, Who eertainlv had experience of the lnn ject wrote his immortal couplet: s..■:-,.-n,t. feininc vane Ilii'ii fnl oiil H'y He. j* the hall the -Bourgeois Centilhomme" «»t saw the footlights.