OUR PARIS LETTER. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Paris, November 18.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2110, 16 January 1886, Page 4

OUR PARIS LETTER. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Paris, November 18.

TIIB conduct of Scrvia is very severely judged here, and has alienated the sympathies hitherto so ungrudgingly extended to hor. Undecided whether to attack Turkey or Bulgaria, Servia has finished by falling on hor hi others ill race and roligiun ; plea, that the lamb had troubled tbo water of tho stream. Sho will not allow Bulgaria to have a share in tho sunshino to etnorgc out of chaos like herself, an,d regulate n,er relations with Turkey. In presence of this act of international brigandage, of imprudent land grabbing, opinion id coming round to the conclusion that Euroim in cutting out petty kingdoms from the Turkish empire has been flying to the evils she know not of. It is \ory sad that tho first thing the tiny Christian states do after their formation is to rush at one another's throats, and indulge iii Rob Roy seizures. Again, opinion is irritated at the thorough helplessness of the three grand powers to answer for order after all tho cuckoo assurances of peace trumpeted urbe*fet orbi by the autumn meets of the Kaisers. Even Bismarck, who it was accepted had, as Europeon medicine man, ~ a -recipe for all possible political complications, turns out a failure. Ho cannot apparently reconcile the irreconcilable, the interest* of Austria and Russia south of Balkans. When will the Brobdingnags draw the sword, for neither can see their ? respective 'proteges crushed? Are they waiting till Greece kicks at the turbaned Turk? The .treaty of Berlin was rather a preface than an epilogue. It imagined that time would engender lassitude, and wear down the angles of rival pretentions. It has neither maintained the integrity of the Ottoman empire nor achieved the downfall of Islamism in Europe. It made the elements of discord existing between ■ all the Balkanic races more threatening and more bitter, apparently, than between the , oppressors and the oppressed of yester- . ,day. It has become eye for eye and tooth fos tooth. "No Greeks in Macedonia "is a catch-word with the Bulgarians. , . Bulgaria is the out-put of the Muscovite sword. She is the pet, and eldest daughter of Russia, who gave the Bul1 garians arms, but not for use ; she supplied military officers, but to keep down any manifestations of independence Russia aimed to make the Southern Balkans not a kingdom but a satellite, and that England promises to checkmate by making the independence a reality, save for the Sultan. - 1 There are not a score of French residents in Sofia. The accounts received from them apeak highly of Prince Alexander. He is about thirty years of age, tall, and a finelooking man. He is slightly stooped, with • long, brown, falling moustache, eyes demiclosed, like * politician's or a seer's. He has nothing of the heaviness or automatism of the German. He is slow in gesture, and r his physiognomy is mobile. His Hessian ' blood is a happy mixture of the Teuton and • the Pole. His mother was the sister of Bosaak-Haake*, chief of the Polish bands of 1803, and a general in the Garibaldian con- . tingent of 1870-71 for the aid of France, and in whose service he fell. The Prince npeaks French very fairly, and Russian without an accent. He welcomes visitors withikindness ; his conversation is at once lively and grave. His civil list is 000,000 francs » year. His chief amusement is " riding out with his staff, a laCossaque, that in, on very vigorous ponies. He is generally in military costume, tunic, .deep green { ornamented with Russian* decorations/ / He used to go secretly for a " spree" to Bucharest — that Capua of the East. His first Parliament sat in .in old wooden shed that served the Russian officers for a casino. -The members, one elected for every 10,000 '< inhabitants, amount to 168, several being simple peasants who can neither read nor write, arts not the less alleged to come by ' nature. Their costume was a simple sheepskin. However, to be a well-favoured man ia ft gift of fortune. English barons and French bishops at one time could not write. The Turks are not to be caught napping. F6r moribunds they have astonished the world by the vitality of their preparations and the brilliancy of their diplomacy. They mean to die game if the three Imperial masqueraders have agreed on their extermination ala polonaise. Salonica becomes the pivot now of the situation, either to check an Austrian advance or an attack from the Greeks, or to chastise the Servians. Although Adrianople be more populous, Saloniki is the second city in European Turkey after Constantinople from which it is distant 325 miles. It ba3 ever been an important city, from the time it was called "Thorma," on account of its many springs, till Casaander, who rebuilt the city, in'3ls, called it "Thessalonica," after his wife, the sister of Alexander the Great. Its population is about 75,000 ; it was 220,000, at the founding of Constantinople. Saloniki is a good com- , raercial port, and a French friend of mine, who has recently settled down there, as doctor, states nearly all the trade is in the hands of the English, and that *-he Americans are rapidly going ahead. The Romans made the city their principal seat "-of domination, after .they conquered ,y Macedonia. During the Civil War, it was £ihe head-quarters of the Pompeitn party and ■••the Senate/ Qicero was exiled to, Saloniki, - and there wrote several of his letters. * But it has special interest for Christians, on account of the visit of St. Paul in AjD. 52. with Silas and Timothy ; and when 'inn title of Roman citizen secured him flgainst' the outrages of the Jews. The apostle remained not more than three weeks in Saloniki ; for "three Sabbath days ha taught in the Synagogue," and the green marble chair? from which he preached, is shown in tho mosque of St. 3<|phia, a building, originally a Christian cnnrcW. ' St." Paul addressed two of his "Epistles to the Thessalonians " from i,. Corinth and Saloniki was called the i ."Orthodox nity," because once viewed as „! the capital of Christianity in the East. It was thus ifc became very largely the in- , , strument in the conversion of those very Slavonians and Bulgars who are to-day cutting each other's throats in fratricidal war. • h Saloniki, situated at the head of a gulf, occupies a very- picturesque position, the streets rising over each other, tier upon tier. It was duly sacked and pillaged by friends and foes, despite its formidable five ' miles of dazzling white walls, citadel, and • celebrated seven towers. It was on account of the massacre here that St. Am- ; brose compelled the Emperor, Theodo3ius to do public penance for bis Abominable crime, slaughtering 7,000 spectators while enjoying the circus, by appearing, stripped of all imperial pomp, at tho - ' door of Milan Cathedral, to demand pardon for the brutality he ordered. Saloniki fell to the power of the Turks in 1430, and has since so remained. M. Brisson's "declaration" before the - new Chamber fell cold and flat. It has been not inaptly described as " the burial service ■for the Ministry." He has not had the courage to be precise, definite, and decided on any of the seething questions. Indeed, no one expected he would be. He is a very ' respectable map, but has not a particle of statesmanship in his character. He means ' , well, but what is required of him is to act well. His programme is- neither fish, nor , flesh, nor good rod herring. People wanted to know if France was to remain or to scuttle out of Tonkin and other sad adventures which suck the life and treasure out i of the Mother Country. He acknowledges the financial situation is bad, but does not indicate how the deficit is to be met, when '' "ill has arrived at the limit of taxation. As for fiscal reforms, they are not only ripe, but rotten ripe. He believes the separation of Church and State to bo untimely— that's •11. The question has arrived at the yes or no stage, and it is only the sagacity of the inollns to evade the issue. Quite undue importance is attached to refusing to amnesty a score of feather-headed utopiatu, Louise Michel, Prince Kropotkine, c tutti quanti. When the Chamber has new members who were Communists, and • when France is represented abroad, as in Egypt, by an ox-Communist, M. Barre*re, it ia hardly worth while dividing the Republican party into bitter camps on such a point. Tho unity of the Republican deputies is so strained that it has reached the snapping point, and thus leaves the fate of Cabinets, like a shuttlecock,- between the Monarchal phalanx and the dissatisfied Republicans. There is no truth in the rumour that France contemplates throwing sheep's eyes on Ssam as an equivalent forfcbe neat ronnner England bos taken over Burihah", and her forgetfulness to evacuate^ Egypt. When'-the Union Jack replaces the Peacock flag in Upper Burmah a new route will be opened up to tap Western China, free to all the world. France can enter there like , other nations. Her weakness, or day dream, has ever been to conquer and feeep out other civilising nations by exclusive tariffs. Indeed, the fatal idea underlying her recant ctmzb for colonial expansion was the expectation tp be^bfe to make them

milch cows, as did formerly Spain, Portuf.a\ and Holland with their dependencies. Attention is being drawn to Piince Bismarck's iron finger-rinjr, with the " Never ALi.nl " ni'ibto in Russian. Bismaick is a good itn.HMun scholar, as the fir<«t thing he did, ho has told us, on being nominated Ambassador at St. Petersburg, was " to go to school." In the last century Perkins, an American doctor, created the \ogue for m.i^net ling.s to ward off nervous affections e.spcci.illy in the ladins, but the lattei when they possess very pretty hands never wear rings at all. Iron rings are said to possess tho attribute of preventing paralysis and apoplexy. Since the Prince has become .slender and ;i hydropath he has nothing to fear from these maladies. Had he even the ring of Uyges he could not make himself more conveniently invisible than when ho lies by at Varzin, at the ancestral homo. Rome bestowed iron rings on her Senators as a badge of office, changing it for a golden one when the Senator was sent alnoad to represent the State. Bismarck is not the kind of man to be swayed by the doctrines of Schopenhauer and H.utni.inn, to commit suicide as the ideal of human felicity, and so wants no poisoned ring to carry about with him like Demosthenes and Hannibal. Neither does be want me to seal his letters, as lie dislike.s wiiting, at least ask Earl Gmnville. In Rome rings were given after the conclusion of bargains. Possibly tho Prince wears one to symbolize his engagement with Austria, or to commemorate the carrying off commercial treaties, or the picking up of a waste corner of tho universe, by one of his fair-haired and blue-spectacled countrymen. A Russian gentleman lately informed me, Bismarck has worn the. ring for years. Possibly it may have been fabricated by Tubal Cain, at any rate he wears it on the fourth finger. The latter ringer is symbolical we all know.. It is the last to succumb to the gout, hence it is called the " healing finger," and so employed by apothecaries in stirring their mixtures. The cooks use the index finger in their amalgamations, ominously enough, that was the finger of silence with the ancients. Caesar tell* us the Gauls employed rings as money. Who knows, but perhaps the poor French when they were mercilessly fleeced in 1871, for the five milliards ransom money, had to fall back on all the old coins in the museums, and the Prince selected one, as a souvenir, so that the French ambassador could ever in his interviews recall what a misunderstanding with Vaterjand would cost. It would be well to bear in mind, that perhaps at this crisis of old Europe, Bismarck's hand has not so much iost its cunning, as his finger its ring. When Solinian beii Daoud lost his ring in his bath, hejbecame suddenly deprived of intelligence; he withdrew from public affairs during forty days, till one day the ring was found in the stomach of a fish, served at table. A wrinkle for those who have occasionally a " wee drappie " in the eye ; or fear the consequences of coming home at the sma' hours. The Romans wore special stone rings when attending banquets, &c : on these stones mottoes or figures were engraved, and the moment the owner felt he could hardly discern the cutting he drank no more. In these philanthropic and goody-goody days, that precaution may take rank beside a blue ribbon. Of all the strange rings or cheap jewellery, those once employed in Paris, for couples who had lived maritally, but not wedded till some years later, when the children could give a.vay the bride, were the strangest. The marriage had to be celebrated in the Church of St. Marne ; the clergyman placing on ■ the bride's finger a ring composed of straw or rushes. Anything in a pinch : the French courts have ruled, that even a key can do duty as a wedding ring. Rings are worn not only on fingers but on toes, in tho jaws, ears, no?e, and chin. The Romans had summer and winter rings, had them for morning and evening wear, some millionaires even objected to wear the same ring a second time. The elegantes under the Directoire, promenaded in the Tnilories garden, with open worked shoes, to allow the toes to peep through. On every toe was a ring enriched with diamonds. The police are carrying on a healthy crusade against a class of money dealers who, taking advantage of the terrible stress retail dealers are experiencing, discount their bills at a double cent per cent rate, receiving payment of principal and blood money in weekly instalments. The Grand Opera is suffering severely from hard times ; indeed, so do all the other theatres, which explains why money will not be invested to bring out new plays. The leading comic singer of a Cafe* concert threatens to strike unless his miserable salary of 200frs. per night be not augmented. Parisians continue to remain between cold and indifferent, respecting the Exhibition of 1889. It may benefit humanity, but one thing is clear, it runs up everything in price in Paris. Could a bazaar be organised to bring down prices, all citizens would support it. At the assizes of Caen, three prisoners were sentenced to be guillotined. The son of a very high official, being short of pocket money for gambling, went to the suburbs and hired a private carriage for the day. After some time driving about, the city, he sent the coachman into a telegraph office to post a telegram, when he bolted with horse and trap and sold them. He succeeded ten times in the trick. The Piintomps, the leading soft goods store here, now sells sugar in order to turn an honest penny. A butter and bacon rayon may soon, perhaps, be expected at the Louvre Magazins. A hint for mothers : In the Corea, babies are crammed with food, chiefly rice. When the mam ma con eludes the infant has enough, she taps it on the stomach with the spoon. If there be a rebound, baby is considered 11 crowded'" The Shah of Persia describes M. Gre"vy thus: " A very intelligent old man, with a shaved lip and chin." He would not know the President now, were lie to re-visit the glimpses of the moon, for he has a beard like a pard.