The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1877-02-01
HONOR BEFORE RICHES.
Young Italian Professor Refuses
Fortune of Twenty Millions.

Most of our readers are familiar with
Bulwer Lytton's novel, "What Will He
Do With It?" The interest turns on
the use the hero of the romance will
make of large fortune. High society
in Paris is now specializing anxiously
upon the manner in which young pro-
fessor, living in a garnet of the QUARTER
Latin, will dispose of more than three
millions and half sterling in ready
money and splendid real estates in
France and Italy. The young profess
sor is Philippe di Ferrari, only surviv
ing son of the late Duke di Galliera.
He was some years ago one of the most
brilliant pupils of the Lycee Louis lie
Grand. With feverish ardor he de-
voted himself to study. This in
tense application arose from double
motive. The boy loved knowledge,
and he had high and sensitive
spirit, which was wounded beyond
endurance by the Duke one day in
his presence in q fit of anger revealing
family secret which concerned him.
From that hour he resolved not to
touch centime of the paternal for
tune. His mother, the only daughter
of the Marquis di Brignole Sale, is the
heiress of three powerful Genoese fami-
lies. In the early years of her married
life her wealth was scarcely inferior to
her husbands This fact consoled to
some extent her sensitive boy for being
a pupil in an expensive school, where
he would not have remained at the
charge of his parents, had it not been
that compulsion was exercised. On
obtaining bachelors degree, he cast
off what he deemed to be a dishonora-
BILE state of dependence, and set out,
p,nniless, to do for himself. He
drudged obscurely in schools as an
usher, and, through sheer force of toll,
is now an assistant professor in the
College of France. The vast Galliera
fortune is within his grasp. He could
at any moment have houses, lands,
picture galleries, palaces, and the adu-
lation of endless sycophants and pros
perity worshipers. The Hotel de Gil
liera, in the Rue de Varennes, stands
in park of about nine acres. Cows
Craze on the lawn, and on the
side next the Hotel DIES In
valides there is a Swiss village for the
i
collection is the first among the private
galleries of France. Professor Phil
lippe Ferrari pays Is francs month
for his habitation in the Faubourg St.
Jacques. He is not insensible to its
dinginess and discomfort, but he re-
spects himself in it. He feels he is no
imposter, and to the establishment of
society, which can not believe that
what it considers to be toquade will en-
dure, he perseveres in rejecting fortune
and duchy. His mothers wealth, at
her death, he consents to inherit,
but not unless his fathers
property be appropriated according to
the wishes of the late Duke, who was
a Freethinker, and superb in his munif-
cence when an appeal was successfully
made to his public spirit. He granted
to the municipality of Genoa the Palaz-
70 di Brignole Sale, which, as well as
its picture gallery, he alienated with
the consent of the Duchess, who derived
it from her father. The port
OF Genoa was not large enough
for the commerce which the rail
way movement brought into
it. The Duke, hearing this, sent a
present of 100000 francs to the mu
nicipality of the city, and 1000, 900
francs to build houses for the dock
laborers. A no less noble donation
was made to the municipality at Rome
to build lay university, and capital
OF 100000 francs was promised, the
interest of which was to be spent in
professors salaries and scholarships.
The Duchess has sent 100000 francs
to the Pope to compensate for the
strictness with which she respected her
husbands free-thinking principles in
giving his remains q civil interment.
The body, when she reached Genoa,
was in the hands of the priests, who
were preparing pompous obsequies.
She was obliged to obtain the aid of
the civil authorities in preventing re-
QUEEN being chanted over it. The
funeral was of the simplest kinda
leaden coffin in plain oak shell,
hearse devoid of ornaments. No hired
mourners, no religious oficiants, no
psalmody proclaimed that a maonifco
to the fate of the peasant had yielded.
A square stone, with name and two
dates, marks the spot where the
opulent Dukes body was consigned to
kindred earth. The Ferrari fortune
was considerable one at the end
OF the last century, many of the family
having filled high places in the story of
"Genoa the Superb" The late Dukes
father, through contracts obtained from
Napoleon l., became one of the richest
men in Italy. His son, the late Duke,
came to Paris early in the Second EN-
plre and founded banking house. He
was far-seeing man who had believed
In the possibility Of steam-engines SUI