In the church itself hang some of the most exquisite Turkish carpets I have ever seen—such tender idyllic blue-green tints, such gloomy passionate reds, such pensive amber shades, as to render distracted with envy any amateur of antique fabrics who has the harrowing disappointment of ascertaining that these masterpieces of the Oriental loom are not purchasable even for untold sums of heavy gold!
“There was ein verrückter Engländer (a mad Englishman) here some years ago,” I was told by a church-warden, “who would have given any price for that pale-blue one up yonder, and he remained here a whole month merely to be able to see it every day; but he had to go away empty-handed at last, for these carpets, like the vestments, are the property of the Church, and not even the bishop himself has power to dispose of them.”
[CHAPTER XLIX.]
SINAÏA.
From Kronstadt we made an excursion to Sinaïa, a fashionable watering-place and summer residence of the King of Roumania, about two hours’ distance over the frontier.
We had provided ourselves with a passport from Hermanstadt, for just at that particular moment the regulations about crossing the frontier were rather strict, in consequence of some temporary coolness between the two crowned heads on either side. Usually the entente cordiale between both countries is most satisfactory, and Austrian officers wishing to pay their respects to his Roumanian Majesty can always count on a gracious reception; but we happened, unfortunately, to have hit off a brief period of international sulks. Austrian officers were forbidden to show themselves in uniform within the kingdom, or, indeed, to cross the frontier at all, and were consequently reduced to the subterfuges of passports and plain clothes.
It ultimately proved to be much easier to cross from Hungary to Roumania than vice versa; for on our way back that same evening, we were detained an eternity by the suspicious pedantry of the Hungarian officials, contrasting unfavorably with the genial simplicity of arrangements on the other side.
The whole route from Kronstadt to Sinaïa is very beautiful, the railway running through a deep valley which sometimes narrows to the dimensions of a close mountain gorge, densely wooded on either side by noble beech forests, bordered by fringes of wild sunflowers, which marked the way in a line of unbroken gold. One might almost have fancied that some munificent fairy had thus chosen to show the way to the King’s abode, by strewing gold-pieces along the road.
The glimpses of peasant life we got by looking out of the carriage-window already showed us costumes more varied and fantastic than on the Hungarian side; an air of Eastern luxury as well as of Eastern indolence pervaded everything, and it was impossible not to feel that we had entered another country—the land beyond the land beyond the forest.