A Trolley Named Romance

The path of true love was rougher than a Bucharest trolley track. The groom had lost his country, his throne and his fortune to the Communists. The bride was losing the blessing of her church for marrying outside its dispensation, and the bride's parents stayed away. But in Athens last week,wearing borrowed Greek crowns, Orthodox Michael of Rumania and Catholic Anne of Bourbon-Parma were at long length married.

"Come, Good Bride." Michael and Anne spent the last few days before their wedding in leisure; one afternoon they watched the demonstration of a new British jet plane. "The only thing that took Michael's interest off Annie," remarked a courtier, "was that plane. The rest of the time they held hands."

On the appointed day, in a ballroom of the royal palace, Archbishop Damaskinos, Primate and former Regent of Greece, lifted his jeweled cross for the groom and best man to kiss. Then the choir began the Orthodox hymn Devro Nymphi, Devro Nymphi--"Come bride! Come good bride, come pure bride, come, oh beautiful chaste bride . . ."

Slowly, Anne walked through the hall on the arm of her uncle Erik Frederik Christian Alexander, former Prince of Denmark. She wore a white satin damask dress and her suntanned, elfin face was haloed in billowing tulle. When the rings had been exchanged and the couple's crowns symbolically tied together, the Archbishop intoned: "With the help of God, dance!" and the bride & groom made three turns around a table. At this point, the couple should have been showered with rice; but rice is scarce. The gesture was omitted.

"Come, Little Michael!" Outside, beyond the garden hedges, a few other refugees from Rumania waited. When the couple appeared, they called, "Come nearer, little Michael," and "Take us back to Bucharest." When Michael stepped close and waved, his former subjects wept. Cried one: "God bless you Greeks for giving my Michael such a fine wedding."

The couple's future was highly uncertain. In the view of her church, Anne had fallen into "grave sin." Gossip around Michael's peripatetic court had it that his assets were only $30,000, two cars and one jeep.* "Michael wants to buy a farm in the States and earn his living," a member of his entourage said. "Do you think he has enough to get one?"

* Gossip of a different kind was reported in the Hearst press. Mariella Lotti, an Italian movie actress allegedly long enamored of Michael but kept irom him by history ("war is contemptuous of love"), was reported seriously considering going into a nunnery. "Will she say to the world, farewell?" throbbed the New York Journal-American. "Will she take the last step and enter?" At week's end, neither she nor her press-agent was sure.

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