Count Michel de Saint-Pol, losing his last battle with officialdom, has been banished from his ancestral chateau, which is being turned into a local attraction replete with golf course.
"I wanted so much to die at La Perriere," the penniless 73-year-old count was quoted by the French news agency Agence France-Presse as saying.The count was expelled Monday from the crumbling edifice where his ancestors lived for 300 years in this town 255 miles southwest of Paris.
For temporary housing, a monks' abbey lent him a farmhouse with neither electricity nor running water.
De Saint-Pol was given an indemnity of $300,000 in lieu of the chateau - money which he has not yet touched.
The bearded count, without financial means, has been fighting since 1981 to keep his chateau, a dilapidated but historic monument that the municipality wanted to restore.