No sooner had Grigore finished speaking than someone began applauding and laughed.
"Bravo! I'm so moved I could almost cry! Worthy indeed of Archduke Ghica. You truly are a villain who would never repent, even in death!"
Both Grigore and Cuza were utterly astonished, for the man before them was Milyakov, Grigore's most important adviser. It would not have been an exaggeration to call him Moldavia's chancellor.
"Milyakov, how can you say such things? Have you forgotten the dream of us Romanians?"
Faced with the accusation, Milyakov laughed even more wildly.
"You people dare talk about dreams? Have you seen Paris? London? Vienna? You're nothing but a pack of sewer rats!
"The giants around you could crush you with a twitch of their fingers! If you are allowed to run wild, Moldavia will sooner or later be dragged into the abyss by you!"
"Milyakov, stop talking! We have no time to listen to your nonsense. You heard it too—the Austrians have invaded! We have more important things to do now."
"Archduke Ghica, if I were you, I would do nothing at all. I told you long ago! Those Transylvanians who came fleeing here were bringers of disaster!
"Now that the Austrians have come, do you still intend to make every citizen of Iași bury themselves alongside them?"
"I will not allow you to insult my compatriots! You traitor!"
At this point, how could Grigore possibly not know what the other man intended to do?
"What compatriots? We are Moldavians! They are Transylvanians. Everyone originally had their own land, their own lives—why must we forcibly fuse together?
"Just as the Danube River and the Mureș River will never flow backward, the Orthodox churches on the eastern foothills of the Carpathians and the Catholic churches on the western foothills are destined to