Quakes and Carol

While slighter temblors shook the nation, Rumania's chief concern last week was with the effects of last fortnight's violent earthquake shocks. In Bucharest 98 bodies had been taken from the stony ruins of the elegant Carlton apartments. The national toll rose to 357 dead, thousands injured.

As in most disastrous times, many people sat in cafes, talked of other things. Rumanians were gradually learning many more unpleasant things than they already knew about their ex-King Carol, who abdicated last September (TIME, Sept. 16) with redheaded Magda Lupescu.

According to the stories told, before his abdication Carol had built a royal hunting lodge costing 150,000,000 lei ($780,000), and stables costing 400,000,000 lei ($2,080,000). In these fantastic barns the walls were lined with mirrors, floors were made of costly faience, each groom had a three-room, electrically heated apartment, the horses themselves stood or lay on expensive mattresses. For her part, Mme. Lupescu had whimsically ordered many buildings in Bucharest torn down simply because she disliked their looks. Before he left Bucharest for a trip to Rome last week Rumania's new dictator, General Ion Antonescu, had put a stop to these demolitions. One of Mme. Lupescu's last acts before fleeing the country had been to give her brother Constantin Shloim Lupescu 4,500,000 lei ($23,400) to help tide him over the hard, anti-Semitic days ahead. After her flight, Brother Constantin was sufficiently urged by the police to show them the place in the wall of his home where he had hidden the funds. They were confiscated. The police also found other millions of lei hidden around Constantin's property, a secret cellar containing 365 bottles of champagne from the royal cellars.

Rumanians heard how ex-King Carol had behaved when the eleven-car special train on which he fled ran a gantlet of pro-Nazi Iron Guardist gunfire at Timisoara railroad station. Carol had jumped into a bathtub while bullets smashed windows (see cut), killed an engineer, wounded the station master. At the same time, Carol's former Lord Chamberlain Ernest Udarianu had flung his foppish self under a table. Beyond the frontier Carol gave the train crew $2 apiece. One man refused the tip.

Rumanians also heard that, since his arrival in Spain, Carol had apparently been too indifferent to Mme. Lupescu to visit her bedside when she had a nervous collapse complicated by a mouth infection. With him, in abdication, he had three automobiles, four Rembrandts, stamp and china collections, but there was no public knowledge as to how much money. Mme. Lupescu had between 15 and 20 dogs.

By last week the Spanish Government had apparently reached no decision on the Rumanian Government's request that Mme. Lupescu and ex-Lord Chamberlain Udarianu be sent back to Bucharest to stand trial, respectively, for the "murder" of No. 1 Iron Guardist Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the looting of the Rumanian treasury. The Rumanian "party" were apparently still under genteel Spanish detainment. Carol had been invited to Cuba.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.