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"That every lady had a price was a foregone conclusion . . . but only from 20,000 leis up did they consider her a lady. It was the same with the politicians . . . if they were expensive enough they could be considered statesmen."
Once the Excellencies introduced the Countess to a deferential man who had "the face of a seal and breathed very loudly through his short nose." The old men were very cordial while the seal kissed the Countess' hand with "very moist lips." But as soon as he moved on, Bratianu-beard said: "Voila le gigolo le phis dangereux de Bucharest." All his friends in high Rumanian society knew, said the Old Excellencies, that "he lived on women and blackmail" and "worked for Moruzov's Secret Police." Nearly everybody in the Athene Palace worked for Moruzov, they said, from waiters and washroom attendants to "the apple-cheeked page boys . . . and, of course, the demimondaines who sat professionally in the lobby." Warned Bratianu-beard, "Watch your step, Madame, and confide in nobody except in us." Said the Grey hound: "Nous sommes les seules personnes discrètes a Bucharest."
The Countess wondered what indiscreet Bucharestians were like. But just then the Old Excellencies bowed to an "extraordinary dark beauty" who was slipping off her sables. "That," whispered the Greyhound, "is the friend of the German and the Hungarian and the Italian ministers. They all pay her for telling them what Udareanu [Carol's court chamberlain] does. And Udareanu pays her to tell him what the ministers are up to. The perfect arrangement."
Then there were the Germans. There was Gauleiter Conradi who had the head of a later Antonine on a body paralyzed from the waist down. He seldom got out of bed, but he knew everything and was dreaded by all Germans from the German minister to the charwoman at the legation -"the only difference being that the minister was more afraid than the charwoman."
There was Dr. Neubacher, German minister plenipotentiary for economic affairs in the Balkans. He had been mayor of Vienna when the Nazis made the Jews clean the streets, liked to call himself an old revolutionary. Of Nazi aims in Rumania, Dr. Neubacher told the Countess: "We have only one aim, and that is to keep quiet in the raw-material sphere."
There was also Frau Edit von Coler. She lived at the Athene Palace, but never gave people more than a glimpse as she whisked across the lobby or drove down the Calea Victoriei in her "long grey Mercedes." Rumor said that she was Himmler's sister and a modern Mata Hari. Says the Countess Waldeck: "Mata Hari and her sisters were dumbbells in an era when bare skin was supposed to make generals lose their heads. . . . [Frau von Coler] was not Hitler's spy, but a Hitler propagandist. . . . And to make friends and influence people," adds the Countess authoritatively, "[is] a propagandist's business."