Dull Peregrinations

CATHERINE--PARIS -- Princess Marthe Bibesco--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50). This faithful chart of the peregrinations of high society in pre-War Europe is shocking evidence of just how pre-War dull those peregrinations were. Rumanian born, but bred in democratic Paris, Princess Catherine marries an Austro-Polish count, who withdraws immediately to his round of mistresses, leaving his consort to make her rounds of pompous European courts. Though Franz Joseph, Wilhelm II, and the Czar are the objects of the princess's irony, they prove as boring to her as to her readers. Not until she gets back to her beloved Paris, and a Parisian lover, does she come glowingly to life, and then in vain, such is the relentless requirement of her position.

Princess Bibesco (not to be confused with the writer-daughter of Margot Asquith) presided at 18 over the Rumanian legation in Teheran when her husband was minister to Persia. She prefers living and writing in Paris.