Basking beside the Mediterranean were a couple of Europe's comeliest blonde princesses. As she modestly took umbrage behind a beach blanket to foil photographers at Sainte-Maxime on the French Riviera, Sweden's bouncy Princess Birgitta, 24, might have thought that her already five-week honeymoon with Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern, 28, would go on forever. After all, just down the coast near Viareggio, Italy, were Belgium's lissome Princess Paolo, 23, and Prince Albert, 27, on the beach with young son Prince Philippe as they celebrated their second anniversary.

As the dreary trial of Adolf Eichmann droned on (see THE WORLD), his son, Nicolas Eichmann, 25, remained dutiful and defiant in an interview in Parade. Believing his lieutenant colonel father a scapegoat, the 25-year-old electrician nonetheless said: "I expect the judges to sentence him to death." Claiming that until last year he believed the ex-Gestapo officer to be his uncle, Nicolas insisted that "there were not so many Jews killed as has been charged. Besides, I have heard that these executions were ordered by top Jews themselves, because they believe Jews should be martyrs." As for himself--after such macabre outbursts as "I should have cards printed 'Have Gas Chamber, Will Travel' "--Nicolas Eichmann broke down: "I wish I could just change my name and go into hiding."

Snapped by a waiting state photographer when he rode his palomino gelding Sunshine right up the steps of the State Capitol and into his office, Louisiana's crooning Governor Jimmie Davis thought he looked so purty that he just had to share it. When the first 150 8-by-10 enlargements were snapped up by friends, he ordered another batch of even bigger shots for other Louisianians who want to see how their Governor spends his time. Juvenile constituents of all ages were begging for the autographed photos, but Jimmie's Democratic colleagues had other reasons for being impressed by his canter. "It's the first time," said one, "that there's ever been a whole horse in the Governor's office."

AWOL from the Oxford University cricket pitch went its bang-on, "blue"-aspiring batsman, First Lieut. Pete Dowkins, 23, Army's 1958 All-America halfback and currently a Rhodes scholar. His destination: the States and a month's-end marriage in West Point's Cadet Chapel to Judi Wright, 22, a University of Maryland alumna who followed him to England as a U.S. Air Force schoolmarm.

When farm-bred Soviet Spaceman Yuri Gagarin departed Moscow shortly after his successful orbit for a triumphal trek through Czechoslovakia, a West German wire service marveled: "It's Gagarin's first trip abroad." By last week, three months and several countries later, the newly cosmopolitan cosmonaut had polished his terrestrial technique, suavely met his Finnish public in a preview of this week's speechifying appearance at the Soviet Trade Fair in London.

Philadelphia Mayor Richardson Oil-worth's July 4 oratory at Independence Hall rang true as the Liberty Bell and almost as familiar. When buttonholed about it later, the Main Line Democrat gave up the unwitting ghost, Historian

Henry Steele Commager. Admitting that his inspiring peroration had been lifted virtually verbatim--and without permission--from a New York Times piece by the Amherst authority, Yale Lawyer Dilworth alibied feebly: "Professor Commager's fine article said everything I wanted to say at Independence Hall but said it much better than I could possibly have ever said it."

The late Brooklyn-born Hollywood Hero Jeff Chandler, who died last month at 42 after a twelve-year career that "started because I wanted to make $5,000 a week," did well enough to leave $631,000 to his daughters by Divorced Wife Marjorie Hoshelle. The estate could grow even bigger if malpractice is proved in a current investigation of his death--attributed to shock resulting from staphylococcal septicemia. pneumonitis and bone-marrow depression--particularly in California, where the tall damage claims grow.

A sense of humor, discovered Gerhart Eisler, longtime Red eminence in the U.S. who bail-jumped to East Germany in 1949, is a scarce commodity behind the Iron Curtain. After facetiously broadcasting a proposal to partition Washington and to garrison "East Washington" with German Democratic Republic troops, Chief Radio Propagandist Eisler found himself afoul of Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht, who seemed to take the suggestion seriously. After explaining himself, Eisler took to a local newspaper next day to slap his own heavy hand, admitted that Ulbricht "told me I should have my head examined."

Looking as vibrant as in her portrait by Marcel Vertes, Lily Pons, now a Dallas resident, essayed a summer comeback at Manhattan's Lewisohn Stadium. One critic praised the 57-year-old coloratura's "firm sense of rapport with the crowd," but the Times, although noting "flashes of the great stylist of yesteryear," contented itself with the comment that "no orchestra could be expected to follow a singer through quite as many adventures with pitch as Miss Pons encountered."

Making a quieter impression than the jazz-blowing defender of his Buddhist faith, Thailand's King Bhumibol, Somdej Phra Ariyawongsalcottayarn Phra Sangharaja, the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand, landed in Manhattan last week after junketing austerely across the U.S. Paying typical tourist obeisance to the Himalayan-high Empire State Building, he padded sandal-clad and saffron-robed around the 86th-floor observation platform, noted the artifacts of Western civilization--but few of his flock. "I have seen many people in this country who are interested in Buddhism," commented His Holiness, "but not too many."

When Nominal Democrat Samuel Yorty was sworn in as Los Angeles' mayor, the august inaugural was presided over by no less a statesman than Professional Toastmaster George Jessel, 63. Last week, entertainment's sinking showboat offhandedly admitted that the official document he had been handed at the ceremony was a paternity-suit summons slapped on him by sometime Fiancee Joan Tyler, 27. At week's end Joan assured the world, in the blase manner of Hollywood, that "George and I are not mad at each other," hinted that he might marry her when her divorce becomes final in January. Jessel's reaction to the matter: "At my time of life, the charge is a compliment."

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