EXTRAVAGANT SON'S JOKE.

Northern Advocate, 26 August 1913, Page 2

EXTRAVAGANT SON'S JOKE.

YOUNG MONSIEUR DUVAL

An amusing though unfilial series of reproaches have been directed against M. Jules Alexandre Duval, the millionaire proprietor of the Duval restaurants in Paris, by his son, M. Pierre Duval.

M. Duval was trying to limit this young man's opportunity for running up debts by obtaining a restraining order of the court against him. By the time he was 18 years old young Pierre Duval had already accumulated £800 worth of liabilities. He then entered a cavalry regiment for his term of military service, and, despite an allowance of £ 4 a week from home, he soon added another I £800 to the total. His father then obtained the transfer of his son to an Algerian battalion, but several hundreds of pounds were soon owing there, and in addition Pierre borrowed £12 from a shoemaker of the regiment. When his son returned to France, the restaurant proprietor advertised in the newspapers that he would not be responsible for further debts. The young man replied by sending to his father a postcard bearing a life-like sketch of himself, addressed "Au gentilhomme consomme " —a French pun, which may be roughly rendered, " To a broth of a gentleman." The message read, " Many thanks for the little advertisement. From a scion of Godfrey de Boullion —the brilliant French mediaeval knight, whose surname happens to be the title of the first course on the bills of fare of the Restaurants Duval."