A NATION’S MEANNESS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12588, 24 August 1901, Page 9

A NATION’S MEANNESS.

(Slade and t Vhitn) Surely, the unhappiest little yellow-faced royalty that ■ ever shed a teax‘ is Ranavalo, once Queen of Madagascar, now expiating in Paris her crime of having worn in the past the crown of a rich, savage land, Which the white man coveted and clutched. Poor little Queen; they say she cries a great deal in her dingy, third-rate apartment over the wine-shop of the Rue Banquet, when, having been marched out to se-e Paris by ft- minor representative of the Colonial Office, she has been marched hack by the same official, - to dine frugally in her dlsitinl lodging, aiid to retire to bed, like a good little eX-Queen, at the houf the “protocol’thau.fixed. “Protocol” is Scarcely the wardprison rules” Would, perhaps, be more appropriate. If the powers that be are chary* of other honours to the shrinking, Jowly-minded Queen that the Fates fthd GeneraLGallieni have thrust upon them, they honour her in this-—that they pretend to find her formidable. Probably France, certainly Paris, would rather not have to witness this spectacle—the Cabinet and the Colonial Office wasting so much mean, petty- cruelty on this most harmless of POOR LITTLE DIgI’OSSESSED ROYALTIES.

It is pretended that, left to herself, Ranavalo might take flight from Paris, over the border with her and away—to the protection of Germany ox Engla-nd!—and to prevent her flight the Queen is watched by four policemen: she is not allowed to put foot outside her door except at Regulation hours—that is, when the Colonial official in charge finds it convenient to present himself to escort her. In the first days of her. coming, .she. acquainted her official cicerone with her wish to make certain purchases at a certain shop at a certain, hour, and she ordered her landau for that hour, half-past eight in the morning. At halfpast nine she was still in tho house- and in tears—no cicerone, no carriage. At half-past ten both arrived, and the childlike little Queen dried her eyes to drive out. The official, by the way, bad been using -her landau for his own business. But an innocent Malay ex-Queen forgets these small contretemps once she finds herself bowling along the Paris boulevards in gay summer weather; she was happy till she found, inconceivably found, that she was not allowed to go to -the shop she had chosen, but, willy-nilly, must- patronise a “ protocolian” establishment —even articles of toilette must be bought according to the rules. What wonder the wrc-tched woman, thus pettily-tyrannised over, burst into a storm of tears.

A NATIONAL SHAME.

At the cafes, over the pre-prandial absinthe, ,you hear people remarking that France is "being made to look unwcntedly mean. The Cabinet .distinctly gets a bad mark in the popular books when Ranavalo is seen driving past in , ungilded. chains. “It’s a national shame, une honte_ nationale,” I heard an honest bourgeois declaiming tc another bystander outside the wine-shop over) which Ranavalo lives—“a national shame: at Tananarive she was given just two hours to pack up and clear out of the palace: we send her jgnominlonsly to the Isle de la- Reunion : from Reunion she is hurried away to a dismal exile in Algiers ; and when, after three years of Rumble petition, she is allowed to visit Paris, we stow her away in a dingy street, in a mean apartment over a wine-shop.” Ranavalo is lodged on the first storey over the ground-floor—the least desirable flat in a Paris house-.,. It receives the noise of the street and the dust- and debris of the storeys above. In this case, it is worse in "that the wine-shop means daylong and night-long noise, drunken revelry, very undesirablfe'/coriipany as one goes in and out. - 'Eurtli'er: Hi is particular apartment is rordidly furiiished. somewhat after the fashion of a Pentqnville lodging-house. Not only has "it no'bathrc.om, it. utterly lacks running'v/ater! That luxury has to be “fetched on the landing,” as in “model buildings for provident working men” at Walworth! Poor little yellow-faced Queen! No wonder she weeps over- the “ ham-and-eggs” lunch served at twelve sharp! She had expected so much, , pleasure in brilliant Paris • had longed for it so much; had prayed so piteously to see it! Perhaps HER .SORDID MARTYRDOM

will not bs quite useless, all the same. The French people have become- ashamed of their Government, and Colonial experts are beginning to say that Madagascar might be better governed—more intelligently, more- economically; put, in the end, even on a paying basis by the re-esta-blish-ment of Ranavalo on her throne as a vassalQueen. The intelligent Hovas might then rally round Tananarive, and devote themselves to the pacification and development of their rich country, instead of holding aloof, as now, or becoming centres of disaffection and disorder. --It would be pleasant if the generous sentiment of the French people were to light their way to a more profitable policy —virtue, for once, really productive of a solid, material reward.