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PARIS NEWSLETTER -

FROM SAM WHITE

The Gipsies Lose Their Viscountess

1939

the

Paris

Viscountess de la

I Ruchefoucauld, then te left her

husband, heir to the Duc de Doudeauville, France's premier aristoerat, and her daughter for what was to be a week's visit to her family in Madrid. She never re- turned. Instead she went to live with the gipsies in their cave dwellings outside Granada.

The 58-year-old Viscount de la Roches foucauld was fever to see her again until a few weeks ago. He wrote to her regularly during the intervening 16 years, as did her daughter Silvie, now 30.

They continued to plead with her to return to them: for the last few years their letters remained unanswered. She was the daughter of a Marquis de Viana, head of one of Spain's richest and noblest families.

When she marriet the viscount in Paris in 1024 it was almost a Roval Demasion In Spain. family and Church joined Grees to induce her to return, but finally they too confessed failure.

Despite her defiance she was never deprived of money, Her, give was havuriously furnishedt with bath and telephone. 1932 even equippurt

trem

She lavished viney 4:21 especially on ho close Kipy friend, Lola Madina, one of the best-known KP D

Spin. She ate a wish. Iraving all her woodia incipu larg estates in many part of Spain. to het ant to her ney friends

FELL ILL

Two years age she full desperately ill and cancer was diagnosed. Once again her family tried In persuade her to move from her gipsy encamp- ment: She refused even to see them. Then four weeks ago she was reported to be dying. Her husband flew to Spain, anci finally succeeded in moving her to a clinic in Malaga.

gipsies,

sad

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1955.

AIL:

Aboard

The Giles Family Holiday Guide starts at the railway station

GOO

ONLY

STRIKE

NOTICE

PRIORITY FOR

LIVESTOCK

18 PERERABLE Goops

"Never mind about ‘undignified. Vera my girl, it's the only way we can be sure of making Aunt Fanny's in time for ten."

DUDLEY POPE TELLS ANOTHER OF

THE WORLD'S STRANGEST STORIES

THIS NAME WAS

T

DYNAMITE

Several of the gipsy friends followed her there On several

HE name Nobel is glycerine and nitric acid called -cccasions they had to be forcibly

dynamite, and the glyceryl trinitrate and that was evicted as they attempted to see

name Nobel is also the subject Alfred those for his ber. Before she died she was

peace. They are two reconciled in her husband.

was factors which do not mix- Her funeral in Madrid. attended by leading members of or do they? Perhaps they do

to

Before her death he enanged her will, leaving everything to her husband and daughter.

BOTTLE A DAY

Mrs Rockefeller enn, now take,

a bet of champagne a day.

QUOTES

sia

20

researches.

It

his

Then Immanuel's factory at Heleneborg blew up. His young- est son. Emil was killed along with the chief chemist. The shock caused him to have a para- lytic stroke from which he never

Because

and set up torpedo and somet-tubes.

ALFRED NOBEL

for him death paid high

dividends,

French accused Nobel of spying on their own experiments, The British War Office loyally stuck to is gun-cotton-for win is too dood ballast.

which should be replaced by a system of elected dictators,

Disarmaments a method of achieving peace, was uschuss,

he said. The only way to avoid wars was to advance military selence until war was impossible. On the day when two army

will

be able

to destroy each other in one second, all civilised nations will recoil from wars in harrer and disband their

armies," he wrote.

He could not foresee the des- truction of

as incorrect as his

of a city in less than a second; and his theories on the sanity of nations were equally on "the View fair

but

usually repulsive Eventually, as he grew older.

sex"

he gave up his activities in his explosives factories and went to Italy, where he lived at San Remo in a marision which had a' Laboratory attached

While his factories continued to your qut explosives which, due in no small measure to his discoveries,

were 10 revolu-

WIN a dangerous' feld. Nitrogen compounds of varying stability formed the basis of all explosives, and nitrogen tri- the Spanish and French aristo-in the paradox that was chloride an oil too unstable for cracy. In Spain, where women Alfred Bernhard Nobel." the purpose, cost many lives. never altend funerals, dozens of women followed her hearse He was the industrialist for Nitroglycerine in its initial raw the cemetery.

whom death paid high dividends. form, was equally as dangerous.

Bu

1853 Alfred and by Ife dreamed of world peace. father thought they had per- and Invented dynamite, ballastite father

method fulminating caps as an fected a

of using its ex- and atheist he despised Christian plosive powers. For five years Gogata yet extolled Christian Nebel's Blasting Oil" brought

them riches. ethics; and he died after found-

explosives empire leaving a will in his desk which IVORCER blonde Barbara gave a

fortune for establishing "Babo Rockefeller, a former à peace prize.

Bhek are wanted to vies- beauty queen who has recently

hcribe

This

three Then received a settlement from her ex-husband banker Winthrop would be sufficient. He was a recovered.

fand a great one) an Rockefeller, of five and a half chernist

dollars five million for industrialist (one of the great- millier

of this tragedy, and herself and her son and 500 000 est of them all) and an idealist

because of the explosions which Nobel was born on for her attorney-i in Paris re- ceiving treatment for allergy to October 21, 1833, in Stockholm. followed, Alfred sought a way alcohol. The treatment is pro- He was the third son of a bril- of making nitroglycerine safe to

For the

a time. tionise warfare he made many ceeding well.

liant ingin though eccentre. Swedish bearded his month one stock,

plans

for the elimination of Finally he did lather, Immanuel, went to Rus his

Nobel then invented fulminat. wars. which was to revolu-

Fold- ing caps.

Among his ideas was the form- More inventions fol- the whole field of mines factory at St Petersburg. ionise

of ex- Besides improving and ex- plosives. He mixed the liquid lowed and soon he had 129 ation of a council of Europe to ploiting these new weapons Im- nitroglycerine with a clay called patents. Before he was 50 years which countries must submit dis

he thought, manuel found tame to invent kieseiguhr. This made it solid. of age Nobel was reaping a for- putes a year before making war. Alfred Nobel patenter tune from the profits of 15 fac- would give them time to have

tories all over the world, and he wou things. Included among In 1862 experiences ther

them was

light-weight coffin this substance-dynamite.

also had a big interest in the second thoughts. No doubt, it The Heleneborg factory was

would have done, pifields,

but their Baku with a lid which could be opened

inside to allow the rebuilt elsewhere. another was from the

second thoughts may have been and a third

the same as the first, occupant (if he found himself built in Germany

built at Ardeer, in Scotland.

He also suggested a system of alive to breathe.

and called the British Dynamite Nobel's Mile as the brilliant collective security under which Co.

all made vast profits chemist and successful indus- nations guaranteed to They

to band to for the

trialist. But what of Nobel away gether against 17 Alfred was sent to

4 possible qu- the young chemist.

from a laboratory bench and gressor." Still Alfred continued his ex-

But all his ideas had America to study, retterning to

in 1875 office desk?

the same theme peace through Russia to work with his father periments and one day

He was the loneliest of men were frightened to make war, not strength, peace because nations Faris newspaper summing up and brothers. Immanuel's three he cut his finegr in the labora on a speech by former Foreign other sons were also brilliant, 10ty H He patched it with

up

Although

who a millionaire M. Georges Bidanit: and he classified Ludwig as collodion Minister,

collodion and carried on his, ex- could have

money peace because no nation or no anything with nitroglycerine, could "M. Bidault criticised sharply being

buy he did not under man genuinely wanted war. being the

one with the mos: periments. the Austrian

His own evaluation of himself Chancellor, genius, Alfred with most indus- Suddenly he noticed that the stand

M.

one quite commonplace nitrocellulose in the finger dress-

make friends. us a dealer in death was that Raab, British foreign policy try, and Robert the most cour American diplomacy and of ageous.

he have any time for the manufactured explosives to Emil, the fourth and ing was uniting with the tiro-ing how He youngest, had but a short time, glycerine. Nobel, at the age of women. Perhaps he could not save lives; that his dynamite and

discovered 42, had

blasting analyse and label them. Maybe

gelatin saved many gelatin.

Thing Of the three surviving sons.

he found nitroglycerine sul because they could be used with mines and quarries Alfred was later to be the most Ballastite, a smokeless powder, clently unpredictable. Parliamentary question of the successful, although buth Lud- followed. Its main potential use

kety. Above all things he loved to

But why, one might ask, did week-Independent MP M. Jean wig and Robert-with Alfred's was obvious as a propellent for talk of science, literature and

manufacture smokeless Nocher wants to know what help-made fortunes in the Rus- shells and bullets there would peace. Peace was a strange topic he measures are going to be taken sian oilfields.

which had only one for an inventor be no tell-tale puis of smoke to

of explosives, powder, to protect German officers in Before Alfred returned to give away the frer's position, and hardly compatible with his potential use-in armaments?

started to view that democracy

In December ayis a

1896, Aifred uniform when they come to Russia on Italian professor had Italy immediately Parls.

of

* sick man. He derivative of make it under licence, while the useless form

government Nobel was

wrote: "It seems an irony that they now prescribe nitroglycerine for me. They call it. Trinktin so as riot to terrify the druggists and the public."

Rubiresa:

My

have taught me that' marriage does not add anything friendship.

MP M. Bruneel: Frante is for foreigners the most beautiful country in the world because they see it through a glass of winé.

course M. Mendes-France.

A

concluded that the Free World to live. finds itself in great peril."

EVER

Paris.

NAILS sometimes sing.

SINAILS

It has been written at the

request of the Paris Museum

·.

discovered

Lory.

✩.

Those are the bare facts of

HEARD A SNAIL SING?

From ROBIN STAFFORD

13

The year's wait,

in

2

One day he sat down at his rainfall or wher they are put desk in San Remo to write into cages ready for sale.

Snail eating has not always report on some samples of nitro- cellulose powder. He had just -and that's only one of A snail, according to M. Animal psychologist Mr P. H

teen

exclusively French

completed it when he had habit, in the Stone Age stroke and died. the facts packed into a new, Cadart, has a pretty hard Fischer, who was consulted by M. Cadart, says that snails have 410-page encyclopedia, all time from the cradle to the slight memories. And that can with grilled snails when no one had left a

cavemen used to stuff cabbages In the desk was his will He

considerable sim about anails.

. table.

be frustrating.

had managed to shoot 21,700,000 by the time the law He just can't hurry. Re-

yera had finished arguing about member Lewis" Carroll? In the time it takes a snail to Pterodactyl for lunch.

Moses banned snails from the it and taken their pickingsto pill you tell a little faster," Bet from A to B many things Hobre table en religious crablish peace prizes. These

can happen. It can rain,”

grounds. Bat the Grecks and would be awarded "To the per- said a whiting to a snail, breeze can blow up, night may

on the helix son who shall have most or best "There's

Romans doted porpoise close fall,

of and the

the fraternity "belix promoted demoralis" behind us and he's tread- ing on my tail"

All of which involves an aspersa the Burgundy and nations and the abolition or diminution of standing "armies He says that anails cannot But it isn't the snail's acclimatisation session inside the little grey snails going at 39. s

mast French the formation shell, by which time the small, dozen in stand wind or drought, and fault that he has to stop for whose memory isn't all that restaurants today.

Altogether five awands were that Frenchmen eat 600 breath every yard or so. He good, has forgotters what it The book gives a hundred re-established for work towards

and for pence

chemistry, million of them a year is like a fish out of water wanted to do anyway. cipes, ranging from snail shell

broth to a smail omelette.,

physics, medicine and physiology, enough to stretch, end to and has to retire inside the

If you want to breed snails, and afterature, Toxiny the prizes, end; one and a half times comfortable humidity of

all you need is a grassy feld perhaps the most valued of all, round the world.

The snails find their own food, are worth about £10,000

of Natural History by M. Jean Cadart, teacher, snail- breeder, and son of a snail- breeder.

shell

M Cadart reports that the snails on his farm sing a high reedy kind of song after light

and

of peace cometen increase i

I

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