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Life Begins on Friday
169
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