FRENCH ACADEMY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1939, Page 6

FRENCH ACADEMY

ANDRE MAUROIS’S SWORD

Every member of the French Academy has an official uniform and wears a sword at his side. This- weapon is generally presented to him by friends and admirers, and the sword which M Andre. Maurois wore when he was received as a member of the French Academy and took his place among the forty “Immortals” tyas presented to him by both British and French friends.

The new Academician’s sword is of ivory and silver gilt. The pommel is a chestnut within its half-burst shell. This is an allusion to the fact that M Maurios spends many months each year in Perigord, famous for its chestnuts. The hilt carries the arms of Elmeuf. where he was born. The guard is formed of two clasped hands, the upper sleeved with the tri-colour and the lower with the Union Jack, an allusion to M Maurois’s being, as the French call him, the writer of the “Entente Cordiale.” Below the guard is the head of a sphinx, recalling that the French author was during the war a member of the corps of interpreters attached to the British Army, and two auill pens cross beneath its chin. A pair of scales symbolises one of his books, “The Weigher of Souls,” and a star just above where the blade begins symbolises success and fame.