A PARIS LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18166, 3 November 1930, Page 14

A PARIS LETTER.

THE NEXT BUDGET. M. TARDIEU’S ACTION. (From a Correspondent.) PARIS, September 14. M. Tardieu has no intention of risking the life of his Government on the dangerous rocks of higher taxation. A short time ago he made clear his Intention to keep next year’s budget within the limits of the present one; and he has, it appears, carried through his purpose. According to the new system introduced by M. Tardieu, France’s financial year no longer begins on January 1, but on April I—that is to say, some seven months hence. However, in order to run no risks arising out of hasty preparation, the heads of departments were called upon some weeks ago to present to the Minister of the Budget their estimates of expenditure for next year. Added up, these estimates made a total of over £448,000,000, or about £48,000,000 in excess of the expenditure for the current year, A large proportion of the surplus was, it is believed, to be devoted to national defence. Nevertheless, the consequent increased burdens on the ■taxpayer which it would have implied were not at all to M. Tardieu’s taste, and having cut down by about 15 per cent, the proposed expenditure of his own department the Ministry of the Interior, he had the force of example with which to persuade his colleagues to follow’' in his path.

The result of the Prime Minister’s action is that practically the whole of the increased expenditure has been struck out. At the same time, the public, whose interest in France’s defences by land and air is being kept very much alive by the newspapers, is assured that all the sections of the budget concerning national defence are thoroughly well provided for. Disgruntled Andorrans.

That there snould be any connection between Ireland and the affairs of Andorra is at first sight difficult to believe. Yet it appears to be the case. Andorra, as everyone knows, is a little State perched among the peaks of the Pyrenees. But it is not —ss is frequently described—an independent Republic. Andorra is in reality a kind of principality with twin Princes, both of them absentees. One of them is the President of the French Republic and the other is the Spanish Bishop of Urgel. How this curious juxtaposition of the Spanish Church and the head of the French Republic as co-suzerains arose is a long story. But briefly it is the historical development of a compromise which at the end of the thirteenth century settled the long-' standing dispute between Hie Counts of Foix and those of Urgel regarding the over-lordship of the country. In course of time the rights of Hie former passed to the House of Navarre, and so to the throne of France, whence they descended to the President of the Republic; while those of the latter were in course of time transferred to the Bishops of Urgel. So far as France is concerned it is the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees at Perpignan who actually exercises authority and receives from the representatives of Andorra the tribute of £4O a year which the country pays to each of its suzerains.

It appears that the Andorrans are now somewhat discontented, and regard themselves as misunderstood by France. One of their causes of complaint is that the Bishop and the Prefect have refused to let them tap what they are convinced wmuld have been a most profitable source of revenue. An Irish syndicate, so the story runs, has proposed to pay Andorra £3OOO annually in return for being allowed to run sweepstakes in the country on a series of the big horse races of the year. The Andorrans, who know all about the lottery system in Spain, think that the Irish sw'eepstake scheme would be an admirable way of finding the money for improving their roads and building a hospital. Not. so, however, the Spanish Bishop and the French Prefect, who declare that they w’ill not hear of the institution in Andorra of anything in the nature of organised gambling or lotteries. So the Andorrans, to their disappointment, have to go without their money. M. de Porto Riche. In consequence of the death last week of the well-known dramatist M. de Porto Riche, the Institut de France will have to appoint a new librarian of the Bibliotheque Mazarine. It is not a post that brings its holder into the public eye, but for the man of letters on whom the choice falls it means not only an honour but also a charming residence by the banks of the Seine in one of the most tranquil and beautiful buildings in 'Paris—no small thing in these days of high rents and shortage of flats. One cannot help wondering whether M. de Porto Riche’s maidservant has had during these past few days to carry out the instructions of her late master. The author of “Le Vieil Homme” and “Amoreuse” was. a man of idiosyncrasies. During his lifetime he, like Clemenceau, never took his seat among the Immortals in the Academic Francaise, and his one idea was, after his death, to escape from one of those pompous funerals with plumes and black and silver trappings with which France likes to honour her illustrious dead, and from that flood of often fulsome homage which is regularly poured forth on these occasions. So his cremation lias been entirely private, and his remains will be laid quietly to rest on the sea coast near Dieppe. These stipulations were in his will.

But to his faithful bonne the old playwright of 80 gave further instructions. “If after I . have passed away,” he said, “anybody comes and asks after me, just say that I have gone out for a walk.” Now tha.t he is dead there is some curiosity as to what his executors may And among M. de Porto Riche's papers, Prom letters addressed by him to Rejane it would appear that he had written a considerable number of plays of which the public knows nothing. The question is whether these ever got beyond the stage of outlines of fragments, and if completed whether they are still extant. Pavilion du Hanovre. Paris appears to have found its own solution for the problem of how to preserve intact some of its beautiful' old houses without thereby obstructing its normal growth, as an up-to-date capital. The method is simply to remove brick by brick the building to be preserved from Lhe site on which it stands and to build it up again somewhere on the outskirts of the city where it is not threatened by an invasion of skyscrapers. Thus a year (Continued in next column.)

or two ago the splendid Hotel de Massa, which, standing in its large garden, was a landmark in the Champs Elysees, was transported to the neighbourhood of the Observatoire, ‘ where it now forms a magnificent home for the Society of Authors.

The same method, it seems, is now applied for the preservation of a gem of eighteenth ‘ century architecture, the Pavilion du Hanovre, which is being crowded out of its site in the middle of the city at the corner of the Boulevard des Ilaliens and the Rue Louis le Grand. Every visitor to Paris passes, sooner or later, this house, built by the Due de Richelieu (the inventor, it is said, of mayonnaise, which, however, should perhaps be spelt “mahonnaise,” since it was a sauce devised by the Marshal to celebrate his capture of Mahon), but it is so over-topped by modern commercial buildings that its delicate beauties are smothered. Purists may object that to remove a building from its original site and to set it up elsewhere is to destroy all its historical associations. But buildings like the Pavilion du Hanovre and the Hotel de Massa, which were designed to be set among trees and gardens are no longer in their right surroundings when dominated and crowded in on all sides by huge twentieth century constructions. Their removal to parks on the outskirts qf the capital seems therefore to be what the French call an “elegant solution” of the problem.