A QUEEN'S HEART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 224, 20 September 1940, Page 6

A QUEEN'S HEART.

MARIE OF RUMANIA. HER LOVE FOR BALCHIJ. (By WALTER PURANTY.) BUCHAREST, August 17. The heart of the late Queen Marie of Rumania will remain in its golden casket at Balchij despite the virtual certainty that Balchij will be included in the section of Southern Dobruja ceded to Bulgaria.'

Although Queen Marie wan an English princess, ehe learned to love this country, no let* than any Rumanian, and iii all of it her favourite«home was at Balohij, a small port on the Black Sea, where Mho built « modest house in the old Rumanian style, half Byzantine, half Venetian, with terraces and gardens.

The Queen was fond of flowers, but especially of oalja lilies. was strange that she, who had no Jove for Bulgaria, brought her lilies from that country, and ateo Bulgarian gardener* who worked for yearn to make the lilies grow, At la*t they succeeded, eo that now on theee summer nights they et*nd like fragTant sentinels around the little chapel where reeta Queen Marie's hear*.

In her will she stated that although her body should b* buried in the Boyij Rumanian Orypt at eurtea-de-Argee, near Bucharest, her heart must remain in Balchij, which, eh* hoped, would f«r evep be- Rumanian soil.

That hope, it seems, was v»jb s but I understand that the Bulgarian* have been touched by the Queen'? last message and have agreed—or are likely to agree—that her chapel should be left as a email oasis of ftumaniau earth amidst the land that once more wilj become alien to Rumania. And with a guard of Rumanian eoidiers to honour 'their dead Queen. —(N.A.N.A.)