QUEEN OF MOHELI

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1935, Page 7 (Supplement)

QUEEN OF MOHELI

WHY SHE GAVE UP KINGDOM. PRINCESS IN A POULTRY YARD. The French Chamber of Deputies recently spent an hour discussing the pension of a gendarme’s wife. When the deputies had heard the whole story they were satisfied the time was not wasted. Thirty-seven years ago Queen Salima Machimba reigned over Moheli, one of the four Comoro Islands which lie almost' midway between Madagascar and Portuguese East Africa. Salima was 20. She was beautiful. Her kingdom was a little one of only 12,000 people, but the whole 12,000 loved her. Moreover, the land was well favoured, with bananas, vanilla, sugar and other tropical crops.

One day the old Ministers met to discuss the education of their Queen. Was Salima learned enough or should she spend a year in a French college to help her understand French culture? After much debating it was decided that Salima should go to college. The young Queen therefore embarked for the island of Reunion, on the farther side of the Malagasy coast. When she arrived she was particularly attracted by the French gendarmes and their wonderful uniforms, especially by one of them named Camille Paul. Salima sent for him, and lost her heart to him. Unfortunately history does not relate how Queen Salima declared her love to Camille Paul, but the fact remains that she never appeared at the French college. Instead, one fine morning, in the presence of the Governor-General of the island, the curate of Reunion married the beautiful Queen to the handsome gendarme. CESSION OF THE ISLAND.

Now Camille Paul was faced with a problem. Was he to change his gendarme's uniform for the loin cloth of a Prince Consort of Moheli? His common sense said no, and he was able to convince his wife of the insecurity of a throne compared to a position which commanded a weekly salary. Salima consented to abandon her exalted position and be an ordinary citizen for the rest of her life, and she ceded her rich island to France.

France was naturally very much surprised to receive so royal a gift, and in gratitude gave Madame Paul a pension of 3000 francs a year, which was later raised to 5000. Time passed, and when Camille Paul retired they sailed back to his native country. He bought a little farm at Clery, in the Haute-Saone, and there he and his wife and three children lived. To-day the eldest son, Louis, is in the police force; the second, Fernand, is at school, and the daughter, Louise (Princess Louise) looks -after the poultry yard. But times are hard on the land, and. a French deputy who passed the little farm not long ago noticed how poverty-stricken it all was. He persuaded the French Minister for the Colonies that Salima’s prosperous island was worth more to France than 5000 francs a year.

So it is that the Chamber of Deputies has raised Madame Paul’s allowance to 10,000 francs a year, providing for her during the rest of her life. Now that the French people know the story of the little Queen of Moheli and her generous gift to their country they are glad that the Deputies found an hour to go into this great little human matter.