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"Popescu must go," the hairdresser at the Athene Palace told the Countess, "and she must be quartered." She was Elena (Magda) Lupescu, who followed Wife No. 1, Zizi Lambrino, and Wife No. 2, Queen Helen, in Carol's diversified domestic life. No matter how often he strayed, Carol always returned to Magda's motherly care. Said the Old Excellencies: "C'est une artiste." Says the Countess: "One is tempted to believe that here was real love." She adds that "any $50-a-week American publicity man could have saved Carol's throne . . . and could have saved Lupescu all along."
The Countess stayed on at the Athene Palace during the seven great crises that completely shattered the "quiet of the Rumanian raw-material sphere," and left the Countess wondering whether the Nazis were as clever as she thought. The seven crises were: 1) the Russian seizure of Bessarabia; 2) the Hungarian seizure of Transylvania; 3) the Bulgarian seizure of the Dobruja; 4) King Carol's abdication; 5) the Iron Guard revolution and blood bath; 6) the earthquake; 7) the German occupation. The Countess has left a vivid picture of that year of Nazi terror, intensified by the terror of the trembling earth itself.
She has also left a picture of a less obvious kind of terror. The Nazis murder states, and the blow is swift and stunning. But the conquered populations survive. The special nightmare quality of their living death, which the Countess catches with unconscious clarity, is that of the captive caterpillar which the wasp stings and numbs but does not kill, so that its larvae may have living tissues on which to feed.