In June 1990 I found myself in Romania again: in Constanta. Another television assignment. A survey conducted by the French Antenne Deux gave me a chance to show off my knowledge of my native land. We went around asking women how they had gotten by in the years of the dictatorship. A lady formerly prominent in provincial society nostalgically de- scribed to us the glory of bygone days in a harbor town full of interesting consular officers of various nationalities (preferably Italian) and marvelously dashing naval officers. This splendor came to a sudden end followed by years of adversity during which (before her husband — an engineer who owed his unemployment to his bourgeois origins—died) she had been forced to sell all her “real” carpets. She had survived only thanks to her marriage “far beneath my station” to an electrician. When he died he left her a two-room apartment and a small pension. No heartrending tragedy this; her tale was more or less typical of the flat-footed spiritual …