is a town of some three hundred thousand people in a country you could
lose in the Argentine, and there is nothing, comparatively speaking, to
offset its light-mindedness, to suggest realities behind all this life
of patisserie.

You should see the Calea Vittorei on one of these warm summer evenings
between five and eight. It is a narrow strip of asphalt winding through
the centre of the town, with a tree-shaded drive at one end, and the
hotels, sidewalk cafes, and fashionable shops at the other, and up and
down this narrow street, in motors, in open victorias driven by Russian
coachmen in dark-blue velvet gowns reaching to their heels, all Bucarest
crowds to gossip, flirt, and see.

Down the centre in the open carriages flows a stream of women--and many
look like Nazimova--social distinctions so ironed out with enamel,
paint, and powder that almost all might be café chantant singers or
dressmakers' marionettes. Some cities have eagles on their crests, and
some volcanoes. If you were going to design a postage-stamp for
Bucarest, it struck me that the natural thing would be a woman in the
corner of an open victoria--after seeing scores of them all alike, you
feel as though you could do it in a minute: one slashing line for the
hat, two coal-black holes, and a dash of carmine in a patch of marble
white, and a pair of silk-covered ankles crossed and pointed in a way
that seems Parisian enough after one has become used to the curious
boxes in which women enclose their feet in Berlin. Coming up from
Bulgaria, which is not unlike coming from Idaho or Montana; or from
Turkey, where women as something to be seen of men in public do not
exist; or even across from the simple plains of Hungary, these enamelled
orchids flowing forever down the asphalt seem at the moment to sum up
the place--they are Bucarest.