Three or four of their best "brotherhoods," each under the leadership of a famous tenor-singer or supremely gifted fiddler, abide permanently in the capital [Bucharest], where during the fashionable season they are in considerable request at diplomatic dinner parties, and at the evening receptions already alluded to [...] But, once launched into the rendering of some fantastic doina or rollicking hora a surprising change accrues to their demeanour and facial expression; they draw themselves up cheerily — almost proudly — and take free elbow-room with the gestures of emancipate men, joyously conscious of their natural gifts and developed powers; their lugubrious physiognomies are illumiuated by beaming smiles; the droop, as though by magic, vanishes alike from shoulders, eyelids and mouth-corners. It is then that the art he all unreasoningly loves transfigures the laotar from a limp loafer into an eager executant of the strangest strains that ever startled and fascinated a cultured musical ear.