The only other person in the company worthy of remark, was a Frank.  His surtout was of cloth of second or third quality, but profusely braided.  His stock appeared to strangle him, and a diamond breast-pin was stuck in a shirt of texture one degree removed from sail-cloth.  His blood, as I afterwards learned, was so crossed by Greek, Tsinsar, and Wallachian varieties, that it would have puzzled the united genealogists of Europe to tell his breed; and his language was a mangled subdivision of that dialect which passes for French in the fashionable centres of the Grecaille.

Exquisite.  “Quangt etes vous venie, Monsieur?”

Author.  “Il y a huit jours.”

Exquisite (looking at a large ring on his fore finger).  “Ce sont de bons diables dans ce pays-ci; mais tout est un po barbare.”

“Assez barbare,” said I, as I saw that the exquisite’s nails were in the deepest possible mourning.

Exquisite.  “Avez vous ete a Boukarest?”

Author.  “Non—­pas encore.”

Exquisite.  “Ah je wous assire que Boukarest est maintenant comme Paris et Londres;”

Author.  “Avez-vous vu Paris et Londres?”

Exquisite.  “Non—­mais Boukarest vaut cent fois Galatz et Braila.”

During this colloquy, the gipsy music was playing; the first fiddle was really not bad:  and the nonchalant rogue-humour of his countenance did not belie his alliance to that large family, which has produced “so many blackguards, but never a single blockhead.”

Dinner was now announced.  F——­’s wife, relieved of her child, acted as first waitress.  The fare consisted mostly of varieties of fowl, with a pilaff of rice, in the Turkish manner, all decidedly good; but the wine rather sweet and muddy.  When I asked for a glass of water, it was handed me in a little bowl of silver, which mine hostess had just dashed into a jar of filtered lymph.  Dinner concluded, the party rose, each crossing himself, and reciting a short formula of prayer; meanwhile a youthful relation of the house stood with the washing-basin and soap turret poised on his left hand, while with the right he poured on my hands water from a slender-spouted tin ewer.  Behind him stood the hostess holding a clean towel with a tiny web of silver thread running across its extremities, and on my right stood the ex-diners with sleeves tucked up, all in a row, waiting their turn at the wash-hand basin.

After smoking a chibouque, I took my leave; for I had promised to spend the afternoon in the house of a Swiss, who, along with the agent of the steam-boat company and a third individual, made up the sum total of the resident Franko-Levantines in Roustchouk.

A gun fired in the evening warned me that the steamer had arrived; and, anxious to push on for Servia, I embarked forthwith.

CHAPTER III.