"Real Princess"

A tainted Crown Prince, deathly pale, spindle-shanked and likely to bleed to death from the dread disease hemophilia, supplied Spanish Republicans with one of their best reasons for ousting the Royal House (TIME, April 20, 1931, et seq.) Last week sentimental Cuban matrons murmured that love can cure and conquer all. One thing was certain. Spain's one-time Crown Prince Alfonso no longer looks tainted. From 92 Ib. his weight has climbed to 136--since the day twelve months ago when into the Swiss sanatorium where he was lying came a ripe-lipped, radiant Cuban patient, Senorita Edelmira Sampedro, daughter of a rich Cuban merchant.

In Switzerland some people go to sanatoriums just for fun. What, if anything, was the matter with the curvesome Cuban brunette remains her secret. In a whirlwind armchair courtship she accepted flowers from Don Alfonso, gently agreed to his renouncing royal rights in order to marry a commoner and two weeks ago posed with him elaborately for movietones while her impish sister whistled "Who Stole My Heart Away?"

In Lausanne last week the robbery was made good. No longer even a Prince but, after renunciation of his rights, merely "Count de Covadonga," the Bourbon Bridegroom put on a brave front. "Most princesses in Europe," said he, "are empty-headed little dancing flirts. I am getting a real princess, one who is sweet and serious and will make a real home for me."

Shimmering in white satin, trailing a ten-foot train, Senorita Sampedro approached the altar to exchange rings, Latin fashion. Her bridegroom, she knew, had broken down in sobs the night before, when told that ex-King Alfonso XIII irrevocably disapproved. Now he was smiling. Beside him stood the only Spanish grandee who could be induced to come, Duke Manuel Almadova, as best man.

Outside, rain poured down in sheets. Despite a seeming cure hemophilia--successively the curse of the Romanovs and the Bourbons--brooded over the match. In haste Father Borel read a brief Latin, service. Swiss police, alarmed by a threatening note that the bridegroom was in "grave danger," guarded every shadow of the church. Almost furtively, as the serv ice ended, the new Count & Countess slipped out, dashed away in a motor car to spend their honeymoon some 30 miles distant at Evian-les-Bains.

In exiled Spanish Court circles at Fontainebleau morose courtiers remarked that succession to the Throne now rests with ex-King Alfonso's second son, Don Jaime, born a deaf mute and with difficulty educated up to croaking talk.

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