Upon the rare occasions when the musical element is, for some special reason, introduced into the unwritten programme of a soiree at which "one dances not," the luotariy or native minstrels, are hired for the night and stationed in a roomy, divanned ante-chamber, through which the guests must pass on their way into or out of the reception-rooms. There, at brief intervals, they sing the wild melodies of the country, or play quaint arrangements of popular airs, familiar and dear to every born Roumanian, from about nine p.m. (the Dacian dinner-hour is six, and dinners seldom last more than a couple of hours) till one, or at the latest two a.m.