Page 19 Advertisements Column 1

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 29, 7 November 1884, Page 19

King Louis 11., the music-mad monarch of Bavaria, is in sore financial straits. The civil list of the royal family has repeatedly been curtailed under the present constitutional Government, and now amounts to less than a million and a quarters dollars per year. The King has, nevertheless, gone ou with the building of new palaces and such incidental extravagances as performances of grand operas, with himself as the sole auditor, until his ready money is exhausted, and his debts are becoming colossal. A few weeks ago he had to discharge all the architects, landscape gardeners, and workmen engaged in creating the " Alpine Versailles," and he was much grieved at having to abandon his dream of reproducing the gilded luxury of the third empire among the Bavarian alps. But the contractors are still clamoring for payment of their arrears, and the royal spendthrift has been forced to seek the costly aid of the money lenders. It is said that he has just effected a loan from four Bavarian banks of 8,500,000 marks (1,923.000d015.,) returnable in eighteen years. The condition of the royal credit may be imagined from the statement that the syndicate demands twelve per cent interest per annum.