Here he threw himself down for awhile in a big armchair and gave himself up to thoughts that he had never had before, about Roumania's past history, about the old-time ballads of heiduks and chieftains that he had heard in the mountains, and about what he had caught in the conversation at the brilliant restaurant that night regarding Roumania's future.
Even after he lay down on his bed he could not but wonder if Roumania was yet to be a great nation, if Transylvania now belonging to Hungary, if Bukovina now a part of Austria, and perhaps Bessarabia, though claimed by Russia—all with a large Roumanian population, would not be restored to her. Finally he fell into a restless sleep in which he dreamed that he was already a man and fighting that those of his own blood might be rescued from foreign governments who despised them and tyrannized over them.
CHAPTER XV
THE NATIONAL DANCE
When Jonitza awoke he found black coffee and delicious white twists awaiting him. He dressed quickly that he might be in time for the hearty breakfast that follows. It was a holiday, and so later he had a ride behind four horses abreast with his father, first along the sluggish Dimbovitza River on which Bukurest is situated, then into the hills to an old three-towered Cathedral, one of the very few antiquities to be seen in Bukurest. From here the city looked very attractive with its metal plated steeples and cupolas, its many squares and tree-lined avenues.
Then the horses carried them still further away to a neighboring hamlet with its pretty rustic vine-embowered houses, their dark roofs forming verandas on which clay benches invited one to rest. Peasant women drawing water from wells by the wayside greeted them; children tending geese and pigs smiled at them, and a man building a wattled fence invited them into his little country house all blue and white.
When they reached home and had had luncheon, Jonitza found that the whole family but himself had been invited to some entertainment and that he was to be left with Maritza and the servants.
He had begun to yawn and to wonder how he would spend the day, when Maritza solved the problem for him.