Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Life Begins on Friday

scot free, while some poor constable had been made the scapegoat. Costache still missed Colonel Mișu Capșa, who during the year he had held the post of Prefect had made things run smoothly. He had been a just commandant, he knew how to give orders without humiliating a man, and above all he feared nothing. Indeed, he had been a war hero, decorated at Plevna and Vidin. Even the lawyer Deșliu, although he had been with them for only one summer, in ’94, had been better. And thebest of all had been in ’89: General Algiu, who had remained a friend and whom he still visited when he needed advice. The more recent ones, good and bad, magistrates and career soldiers, these he did not count: they had come only in order to have a stepping-

stone to other positions and so that they could be saluted by the crowd when they followed the King in their own carriage during parades. The present chief, Caton Lecca, was a politician, the most slippery of species. He thought hekneweverything. He had also been a member of parliament and a senator, suspected of electoral fraud. He acted the cockerel in front of his thickset wife, but the cannier agents directly subordinate to Mr Costache used to call him, with a hiddenmeaning, Cato the Elder. As for Costache himself, they called him Taki the Great, a double-edged epithet,sincetheirdearchief was rather short, although well built and possessed of handsome eyes with velvety depths, seemingly unsuited to his profession. Apart from

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