The elders sat, the youngers stood at a distance;--so respectful is youth to age in all this eastern world. The first figure in the former group was the father of our host; the acrid humours of extreme age had crimsoned his eye-lids, and his head shook from side to side, as he attempted to rise to salute me, but I held him to his seat. The wife of our host was a model of fragile delicate beauty. Her nose, mouth, and chin, were exquisitely chiselled, and her skin was smooth and white as alabaster; but the eye-lid drooped; the eye hung fire, and under each orb the skin was slightly blue, but so blending with the paleness of the rest of the face, as rather to give distinctness to the character of beauty, than to detract from the general effect. Her second child hung on her left arm, and a certain graceful negligence in the plaits of her hair and the arrangement of her bosom, showed that the cares of the young mother had superseded the nicety of the coquette. The only other person in the company worthy of remark, was a Frank. His surtout was of cloth of second or third quality, but profusely braided. His stock appeared to strangle him, and a diamond breast-pin was stuck in a shirt of texture one degree removed from sail-cloth. His blood, as I afterwards learned, was so crossed by Greek, Tsinsar, and Wallachian varieties, that it would have puzzled the united genealogists of Europe to tell his breed; and his language was a mangled subdivision of that dialect which passes for French in the fashionable centres of the Grecaille. _Exquisite_. "Quangt etes vous venie, Monsieur?" _Author_. "Il y a huit jours." _Exquisite_ (looking at a large ring on his _fore_ finger). "Ce sont de bons diables dans ce pays-ci; mais tout est un po barbare." "Assez barbare," said I, as I saw that the exquisite's nails were in the deepest possible mourning. _Exquisite_. "Avez vous ete a Boukarest?" _Author_. "Non--pas encore." _Exquisite_. "Ah je wous assire que Boukarest est maintenant comme Paris et Londres;" _Author_. "Avez-vous vu Paris et Londres?" _Exquisite_. "Non--mais Boukarest vaut cent fois Galatz et Braila." During this colloquy, the gipsy music was playing; the first fiddle was really not bad: and the nonchalant rogue-humour of his countenance did not belie his alliance to that large family, which has produced "so many blackguards, but never a single blockhead."