About the liveliest thing to be done was to go often to the _place_ on market-days, and watch the endless succession of pictures always to be found there. It is the sort of market-place which would be a perfect godsend to any artist in search of models for his studio. No difficulty here in collecting types of every sort: an amazing display of pretty dark-eyed women in rich Oriental costumes; a still greater assortment of shaggy, frowning figures armed with dagger and pistol, representing every possible gradation of the Italian bandit or the mediæval bravo. Here a sweet-faced young Roumanian woman, tenderly pressing a naked sucking-pig to her breast, might sit for a portrait of the Madonna; there a Saxon matron, prim and puritanical in her stiff old-fashioned dress, is offering cider for sale in a harsh metallic voice; yonder a row of old dames, who sit weaving funeral wreaths out of berries and evergreens, would offer famous models for the Parques, or the _Tricoteuses_ under the guillotine (it was just about here, by-the-way, that the scaffold used to stand in olden times). Dishevelled gypsy women are trying to dispose of coarse wooden spoons, or baskets made out of shavings, no doubt combining their trade with a little profitable pocket-picking; and half-naked gypsy children are searching the mire for scraps of bread or vegetables which no well-bred dog would condescend to regard. There is no great choice of delicacies to be found at this Hermanstadt market-place. Game is but rare, for reasons that I have mentioned before, and the finer sorts of vegetables are entirely wanting. The beef, veal, pork, and mutton, which form the whole _répertoire_ of the butcher’s stall, cannot be compared to English meat, but have the great advantage of being much cheaper—beef about 4_d._ and mutton 3_d._ per lb. Eggs and butter are good and plentiful; and as for the milk, let no one pretend to have tasted milk till he has been in Transylvania; so thick, so rich, so exquisitely flavored is the milk of those repulsive-looking and ferocious buffaloes, as good almost as cream elsewhere, and for the rest of your life putting you out of conceit of your vaunted Alderney or short-horn breeds, and making everything else taste like skim-milk by comparison. Some people indeed there are, of superdelicate digestions, who cannot stand buffaloes’ milk, and are deterred by the delicate almond flavor usually considered to be its greatest attraction. The Transylvanian wines have been described and extolled by other authors (Liebig, for instance), and deserve to be yet more widely known. There are, of course, many different sorts and gradations, those from the Kokel valley being the most highly prized. It is mostly white, and even the common _vin du pays_ is distinguished by its rich amber hue, making one think of liquid topazes, if ever topazes could be melted down and sold at sixpence the gallon.