NOTES FROM PARIS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 105, 24 December 1931, Page 2

NOTES FROM PARIS

TIPS AND TIPPING MINISTER'S ADVENTURE WITH WILD BOAR MINIATURE GENERAL ELECTION PARIS, Saturday. "How much ought I to give?" The question is asked about all sorts of pourboires. With regard to most of them it is easy to answer. Ten peF cent. is the rule for hotels and restaurants and cafes. Taxi-drivers are generally considered to be entitled to something nearer 20 per cent. But what about the concierge? According to Parisian tradition, the concierge may expect two kinds of gratuity from "her" tenants. There is — or are — the etrennes, or Christmas Box, which she gets on New Year's Day, and there is the denier a Dieu. This Iast is paid on first taking possession, and is supposed to be a sort of reward to the concierge for having shown the flat when it was empty, and having reserved it for the new occupant when he decided to talce it. Soon after the war, when flats were very hard to find, cone ierges bargained for, and obtained large sums for such services, and it was evidently under the impression that she eould still base her demands upon this scale that a concierge sued a tenant this week for a denier a Dieu at the rate of ten per cent. on the rent. The Juge de Paix did not .admit her claim, however. There was no longer any speeial merit in having reserved a flat for anyone, he said, for there are now plenty to let, and the denier a Dieu must go back to what custom had fixed that it should be, which is two per cent. The same rate applies to the etrennes. A Negro Priest At Notre-Dame, a negro priest is to be ordained by Cardinal Yerdier, the Archbishop of Paris. His name is Joseph Faye, and he was born in Senegal, of a father and mother who

were both Catholics. He is not the first of his race to be ordained in Paris, for, as long ago as 1840, three Se.negalese were made priests by the Archbishop of the time, and they returned to their own -country • as missioners. Many others have received ordination in Senegal itself, sirice the first one did so in 1859. In other colonies there have been native priests since the seventeenth century. The. remarkable. thing about the present case is that the new priest spoke nothing but native dialect until he was seven years old, and has only since learnt French and then Latin. Since then, ke has brilliantly passqd his baccalaureat, and has studied theology in a seminary in France. Radicals' Growing Strength While Great Britain was in the throes of a General Election campaign, the whole of France voted at what may be described as a miniature General Election, and again the following week. The country votes twice, because there must be second ballots in a number of constituencies where no candidate has obtained a clear majority of the votes polled; for France has never admitted that any number less than half of the total votes could secure election, except during the periods when she has addpted various forms of more or less proportional r'epresentation .The elections now in question were to fill vacancies caused by rotation retire- ; ments, in what in England would be County and District Gouncils. _ They were f ought mainly on party lines, and the most noticeable indication of the ballots is the increased strengtli of the Radicals and the diminished strength of both the Socialists and the parties of the Right. In Lyons and the neighbourhood, the Socialists— until recently dangerous rivals of M. Herriot and his friends, where .they were not actually masters of j the situation — are now definitely re- : placed by Radicals in every one of the seats contested. I Minister's Adventure* \ Although there are no longer any volves in France, there. are still a few bears in the Pyrenees, and there are plenty of wild boar in the forests with which so relatively large a part

of the country is covered. Wild boar can be, and are, hunted within easy distance of such big towns as Rouen, and they sometimes even stray on to the roads at night. The other evening, one of them was dazzled by the headlights of the car in which the Minister of War, Monsieur Maginot, was being driven home from his constituency in the Marne, near Vitry-le-Francois, and charged gallantly. The car, which was badly damaged, was only just saved from crashing into a tree. The carcass of the board, who had paid for his courage with. his life, was handed over by the Minister to bq cut up and distributed among the poor of the adjoining village. Whether he really had any right to dispose of it in this way, and whether he ought not to have been arrested by the nearest gendarme for poaching is another matter. Certainly many smaller men, who have used their headlights to help them shoot smaller game, have been prosecuted for doing so. A Great Viper Year This has been a great viper year in France, and the beantiful autumn weather encouraged the snaites to postpone their -entry into winter quarters. In many places, such as the forest of Fontainebleau, from which they had almost disappeared, they are more numerous than ever, and their presence has been reported from many places quite- close to Paris. Last year's mild winter is said to have been responsible for their recrudescence, and they have' evidently not been, as popular tradition would lead one to think that they would be, discouraged by the. abnormally wet summer. As France can show no fewer than three different kinds of vipers, all of which are dangerous, there is evidently room for a new Saint Patrick in the country.