HEWS FROM PARIS.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 126, 7 June 1901, Page 1

HEWS FROM PARIS.

Paris, April 20. President Loubet no sooner returned from the Franeo-Italian festivities on the Mediterranean coast this week than ha met with a most disagreeable experience. In the afternoon fifty of the most familiar guests of the President, comprising most of the Ambassadors, their wives and daughters, gathered informally in the Palace Garden to welcome the Executive back. The weather was gorgeous and the party was full of the spirit of merriment, when suddenly a welldressed woman of forty, very beautiful and so aristoeratio in bearing that the guards and servants, feeling sure ehe was a guest, had allowed her to pass without question, stepped across the lawn to where the President and Mme. Loubet sat in large rockers. There the stranger charged the President with having shamefully flirted with her ten years ago, when he had, after a long courtship, offered marriage to her one night at Trouville.

The woman was evidently insane, yet she behaved with such impressively dolorous dignity that the whole brilliant, assembly was absolutely made dumb for a few minutes. Then an officer took the stranger’s arm, saying ; “ Come; the President will follow us inside, where the matter can be discussed more suitably.”

The woman warned the amazed Loubet -that unless he married her before Sunday she would sue him for breach of promise. Later it was found that the deluded intruder was Countess Germaine Vanleur. She is a confirmed but harmless lunatic.

Clara Ward, with her gipsy husband, Rigo, spent ten days here on their way to Egypt from London, where they now are. The Princess 'de Chimay- wept bitterly when the two boys bf her . first husband declined to see her. They are now good-sized lads, and their action was quite voluntary. Their condemnation of her wild elopement has evidently out her deeper than the manifest disgust of the civilized world.

Mrs Rigo denies the newspaper story that she is the mother of twins, saying she has no ohildren by Rigo. The Hungarian fiddler, when he was interviewed by a special correspondent, showed the most dumbfounding indifference toward his American wife. He went so far as to Bay: “ She can’t be more tired of this cramped life than I am.

“If now she eloped with another man that' wonld be a solution, but a. woman can’t elope alone, and my wife is no longer very freeh or attractive.”

In the presence of the Princess Rigo confirmed her statements -that they had made arrangements to appear in a Paris music hall next fall. In London they expected to sign immediately for an engagement for May and June either at the Alhambra or the Empire. The managements just now, she said, are trying to outbid each other. Rigo, who is really a remarkable violinist, will play solos and be accompanied by the whole orchestra. The Princess, who can’t sing or act, will appear conspicuously in a box. This, being advertised, is expected to prove a sufficient attraction. The Princess won’t appear under £25 a night.