The Days of the King by Filip Florian Page B

fluff and midges floated by, he told the dentist that in the past hangings had been carried out in that very spot where they now quenched their thirst, after the condemned were marched there in chains, being whipped as they went, as a lesson for the commoners and as an opportunity for
chiloman
and jibes. And after the gibbets in the reign of Brîncoveanu, he went on, under Mavrocordat they erected stakes at the Moşilor tollgate on which they impaled
calpuzani
in the winter, to set the merchants' minds at rest and slake the mob's thirst for executions. At those unfamiliar words,
chiloman
and
calpuzani,
Joseph raised his eyebrows in incomprehension, and that other Carol decided to relinquish Romanian, and explained in fluent German, but with a Cluj accent, that he had been talking about the fever of the mob and counterfeiters, respectively. They went on drinking and seldom looked at each other, rather, they gazed over each other's head at the horizon, one to the north, the other to the south, deciphering the various glints of the afternoon, the streaks like bean pods at one edge of the heavens and a fine, slightly verdigris dust at the other bourn. Since his nocturnal visit to the Silvestru quarter thirteen months earlier, Herr Strauss had been summoned to the palace only once, for a recalcitrant canine with inflamed roots, and so he wanted to find out more about Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig, a man extraordinarily dear to him, a man whom he missed. With his arms folded across his chest, he listened to the voice of the watercolorist, a drawling voice that frequently accompanied the prince on his travels around the country and in the past had kept four other rulers company—Ghika, Bibescu, ûtirbei, and Cuza—and that could often be heard in the mansarded studio at the top of the Green Inn, where the voice's owner made daguerreotypes, talbotypes, and stereotype plates, some with a coating of albumin and silver iodide, others with wet collodion. From that plump thrush of a man there gradually flowed news and details: about the prince's skill in reading his subjects, about the fury that their indolence and toadying aroused in him, about his impeccable general's uniform with its gold epaulettes, about the establishment of a new sort of academy, christened the Literary Society, about his inspections of barracks, grain silos, railways, and ports, about his weakness for miniatures, portraits, and landscapes unsullied by Impressionism, about the purchase of two artillery batteries from Krupp and twenty thousand rifles, about his numerous excursions to the country, including one on horseback through the enchanted forest of the Peleş Valley. Their chat was suddenly interrupted—somewhere beyond the gate, a commotion had broken out. Couples walking arm in arm quickened their pace, a throng of expensive attire (silk gloves, canes, lorgnettes, hats, handbags, medals, high-heeled shoes, voilettes, buttonholes, jewels, and
lavallières)
amid which excited exclamations could be made out. The crowd was flocking toward a marble tower in the middle of the fairground. The other Carol stood up, inclined his head, and left at a run, coming to a halt next to an extraordinary apparatus on whose sides was inscribed
Painter and Photographer to H. M. the Prince.
And as he ran he oscillated between his real name, Carol Popp de Szathmari, and that demanded by fashion and elegance, Charles Szathmâry. The dentist paid for the beers, cutlet, and greens, and then headed to the site of the impending event. He made his way through the crowd with difficulty, moving along its edge, viewing as if in a giant tableauthe Bucuresci beau monde and the allegorical temple at its center, which proved to be made not of marble but lacquered stucco, a mixture of slaked lime, chalk dust, gelatin, and glue. It rested on a wooden plinth in the shape of a dodecagon, with railings and statuettes symbolizing the months of the year, and was girdled