ONE MILLION FRANCS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21511, 7 December 1931, Page 9

ONE MILLION FRANCS

COUNTESS AND VILLAGERS. In the sixteenth century a countess had a quarrel with a village at the foot of the Pyrenees, and because of it the pres-ent-day miller of Pontia de Riviere is to he paid 1,000,000 francs. During the quarrel the countess sent her men by night to steal the flocks of the village, and to make a good job of it these marauders also set fire to the mill, the Moulin de Camon. _ The villagers thereupon brought a suit against the countess, and the whole affair may. still be read in the archives of the Toulouse Parliament. An electrical company now wants to use the water which turns this mill for making electricity, but the miller said that would rob him of his means of livelihood. This is true, says a writer on the subject, and if the water rights were really his the electrical company would have to pay him an indemnity. But water rights have not been vested in private individuals in Prance since 1555, when a list was made of all water rights which the Crown had given away, and it was decided that no such gifts would be permitted in the future. The whole question of the miller’s future therefore, hung on* whether he could prove the existence of his mill before 1555. If he could it would mean that the water right was . a private one and that he was entitled to payment for it by those who wished to use the water for making public improvements. The old records were ransacked, and the quarrel between the Comtesse de Foix and the village was unearthed, and the miller is assured of his rights. The sum he will be paid comes to more than £BOOO. It transpired in the course of the hearing of the case that before the great Domesday Book of water rights was made up in France in 1555 the Duchess d Uzes of that time had granted water rights in a stream running through her land in return for a gift of 20lb of trout a year Centuries have rolled by, and both parties to the contract have changed, it has not yet been decided among the electrical engineers whose duty it will be to go fishing for the trout.