They were perfectly quiet and submissive-looking, betraying no sign of outward excitement or insubordination; but their expression was not to be mistaken, and no attentive observer could have failed to read its meaning aright. It was at _their own generals_ they were gazing in that hungry, longing manner; and deep down in every dusky eye, piercing through a thick layer of patience, stupidity, apathy, and military discipline, there smouldered a spark of something vague and intangible, the germ of a sort of fire which has often kindled revolutions and sometimes overturned kingdoms. Heaven alone knows what was passing in the clouded brain of these poor ignorant men as they stood thus gaping and staring, in the intensity of their rapt attention! Visions of glory and freedom perchance, dreams of peace and of prosperity; dim far-off pictures of unattainable happiness, of a golden age to come, and an Arcadian state of things no more to be found on the dull surface of this weary world! The Austrian generals tried not to look annoyed, the Roumanian generals strove not to look elated, and the English looker-on endeavored (I trust somewhat more successfully) to conceal her amusement at the serio-comicality of the situation, which one and all we tacitly ignored with that exquisite hypocrisy characterizing well-bred persons of every nation. FOOTNOTES: [31] The real name of this celebrated Wallachian rebel, born in 1740, was Nykulaj Urszu. Under the reign of the Emperor Joseph II. he became the chief instigator of a revolution among the sorely oppressed Transylvanian Wallachs, who, rising to the number of thirty thousand men, proceeded to murder the Hungarian nobles, and plunder, sack, and burn their possessions. Hora’s project was to raise himself to the position of sovereign, and he had already adopted the title of King of Dacia when he was captured, and, together with his confederate Kloska, very cruelly put to death at Karlsburg in 1785. CHAPTER XXV. THE ROUMANIANS: DEATH AND BURIAL—VAMPIRES AND WERE-WOLVES. Nowhere does the inherent superstition of the Roumanian peasant find stronger expression than in his mourning and funeral rites, which are based upon a totally original conception of death. Among the various omens of approaching death are the groundless barking of a dog, the shriek of an owl, the falling down of a picture from the wall, and the crowing of a black hen. The influence of this latter may, however, be annulled, and the catastrophe averted, if the bird be put in a sack and carried sunwise thrice round the dwelling-house. It is likewise prognostic of death to break off the smaller portion of a fowl’s merry-thought, to dream of troubled water or of teeth falling out,[32] or to be merry without apparent reason.