Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/120

 of each petty lord was gauged according to the beauty of the swift horses, by the majestic bearing of the swarthy gypsy coachman. Rivalry arose over the richness of the equipages thus admired, the height of the houses, the number of dinners which never ended before daybreak, and often not then, the splendour of the balls which were quickly imitated from the western fashion, the marriages, and funerals, to which all priests, banners and crosses were brought to render the last honours to these mighty ones, who in life had vied with each other for temporal splendours.

Factions were formed by favourites and these loyalties were carefully cultivated by the faction-leaders by baptising children, by leading young couples to the altar, by distributing on all occasions agreeable and useful little gifts. It was as the life in the Albanian clans, the retinue of a small western baron or provincial knight of the middle ages. The new constitutional regime of the last century gave these clans, or cliques, the high-sounding names of liberal or Conservative — poor modest men, busy with the cultivation of plums, the making of the national beverage (țuica), the commonplace interests of a very circumscribed existence — and during more recent times the social cooperatives of the Liberals and the followers of the Peasant party.

A princely fortress has dominated the road since the 15th century: underground passages, masses of old stones testify to its existence. A church was necessarily connected with it. I myself have found, under its renovated roof, Slavonic manuscripts with ornate lettering, Transylvanian prints in the Roumanian of the 16th century, together with holy images in the Byzantine style, the remnants of the scattered dowry of a mighty empire. Later, in the second half of the 17th century, a merchant of