I have moved amongst the most humble. I have entered their cottages, asked them questions, taken their new-born in my arms.
I talked their language awkwardly, making many a mistake; but, although a stranger, nowhere amongst the peasants did I meet with distrust or suspicion. They were ready to converse with me, ready to let me enter their cottages, and especially ready to speak of their woes. It is always of their woes that the poor have to relate, but these did it with singular dignity, speaking of death and misery with stoic resignation, counting the graves of their children as another would count the trees planted round his house.
They are poor, they are ignorant, these peasants. They are neglected and superstitious, but there is a grand nobility in their race. They are frugal and sober, their wants are few, their desires limited; but one great dream each man cherishes in the depth of his heart: he wishes to be a landowner, to possess the ground that he tills; he wishes to call it his own. This they one and all told me; it was the monotonous refrain of all their talk.
*
*—*
When first I saw a Rumanian village, with its tiny huts hidden amongst trees, the only green spots on the immense plains, I could hardly believe that families could inhabit houses so small.
They resembled the houses we used to draw as children, with a door in the middle, a tiny window on each side, and smoke curling somewhere out of the heavily thatched roof. Often these roofs seem too heavy for the cottages; they seem to crush them, and the wide-open doors make them look as if they were screaming for help.
In the evening the women sit with their distaffs spinning on the doorsteps, whilst the herds come tramping home through the dust, and the dogs bark furiously, filling the air with their clamour.
Nowhere have I seen so many dogs as in a Rumanian village—a sore trial to the rider on a frisky horse.
All night long the dogs bark, answering each other. They are never still; it is a sound inseparable from the Rumanian night.
I always loved to wander through these villages. I have done so at each season, and every month has its charm.