She is intelligent, and bookishly erudite.

Last year, the police say, a coastguardswoman, despondent over the death of her mother, was persuaded by a gypsy fortuneteller to turn over thousands of dollars of a “cursed” inheritance.

Even our Securitate-approved minders went into a mental coma when we questioned the genius of the Genius of the Carpathians, Nicolae Ceauşescu.

Courts of love, hawking, hunting, cavalcades, were the pastime of the châtelaines of the middle ages.