Home of a Miser Duke.

Otago Witness, Issue 1764, 12 September 1885, Page 27

Home of a Miser Duke.

Duke Charles of Brunswick, who died in 1874 i " the most despicable figure in the most scandalous chronicles of our times," is the subject of a readable paper in the Temple Bar. A visit to the Diamond Duke's famous hotel in the Champs Elysees must have been, to say the least of it, , exciting. A spring was touched, an arm-chair presented itself, and the caller was whirled round and up into the ducal antechamber. Tin's and the bed-chamber were in solid iron ; the very bed was iron. A minute violet-shaped aperture in the" wall was the koyhole of the recess where the Duke's stronghold, containing precious deeds and documents, hung over a well many yards deeper than the first foundations of the hotel. The cellars were strongholds, like those of the Bank of France. There were iron cases crammed with guineas, coffers untouched since Waterloo containing gold pieces of eight generations of dukes, aud-

tfleve were thousands of ten-thaler pieces which had never been put into circulation. He keptno kitchen, for a cook was necessarily a poisoner in his eyes. He mixed his morning chocolate himself; his milk was brought from suburban farms in a sealed silver can. He left h» millions to Genera.