Above: "Miss Dorange, finishing the Paris-Bucharest horseback ride, is greeted, upon arrival in the Capital, by Colonel Stoilov, Commander of the 4th Rosiori Regiment."
Source: Realitatea Ilustrat&abreve, June 30, 1928, p. 1 (via Digital Library of Bucharest).

Above:The Chateaubriand restaurant, Bucharest, 1925. A selection of dignitaries was waiting here to greet Rachel when she went trotting past them.
Source: Facebook. Posted by Bucurestiul Secret, May 30, 2019.

Above:The Sturdza (or Sturza) Palace, 1928. Rachel was determined to end her horseback ride to Bucharest at this landmark which was then the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The building was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in World War II and was demolished in 1946.
Source: Cornel Dusescu, "Palatul Sturdza," Bucurestiul Uitat.

Above: The Băneasa Hippodrome, one of the points where crowds gathered to watch Rachel's procession on its way to the Chateaubriand restaurant. The Hippodrome was demolished between 1952 and 1960.
Source: "O vizit─â la Hipodromul B─âneasa" ("A visit to the Băneasa Hippodrome"), Via Bucuresti

Above: The Minovici Villa, home to the Nicolae Minovici art museum. This was another of the locations at which crowds gathered to watch Rachel's procession go by.
Source: TripAdvisor.

8. Bucharest, 1928 (continued)

Belgrade to Bucharest (Map 7-8)

Rachel's route to the Chateaubriand took her through Bucharest's northern borough of Băneasa where, at the airport (now one of the oldest in the world) a captive balloon was launched in her honour.

In Bănasea's restaurant district "the restaurants on both sides of the road were packed with a large crowd of onlookers." More crowds waited at the Bănasea Hippodrome and at the Minovici Villa art museum. People presented her with bouquets of flowers all along the way.

At noon Rachel and her entourage were approaching the Chateaubriand where, in a park outside the restaurant, several assembled dignitaries waited to greet her. But instead of stopping at the restaurant, to the dismay of her hosts, she continued up the road at a brisk trot.

An officer who had gone along with her soon returned, explaining that Rachel wanted to end her journey at one of the architectural gems of Bucharest, the Sturdza Palace, then home to the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Clearly Rachel had done her homework on Bucharest. She knew what she wanted to see and where to find it.

Soon enough she returned to the Chateaubriand to "Cheers, flowers, acclamations."

Rachel spent a month in Bucharest and initially seemed to have a good time. By now she was an established celebrity, but a good deal of the attention she received, especially from the Romanian government, was in appreciation of France's role in brokering a stabilization loan on behalf of Romania.

Even more attention was provoked by a rumour that Rachel had brought the cash with her in her saddlebags.

Not surprisingly in the circumstances the Romanian government was happy to pay for a two-room suite in the luxurious Athenée Palace hotel, and Aristide Blank was happy to provide her with a car (and presumably a chauffeur) to take her wherever she wanted to go in town.

As in other cities she visited, there were banquets and other festivities to attend. On the afternoon of Tuesday, July 3,

"the General Inspectorate of Cavalry hosted a luncheon at the casino of the 4th Rosiori Regiment" (the Reds) "for Miss Rachelle d'Orange and Polish Captain Plaschowsky Dadeuz. French and Polish military attach├⌐s and officers of the cavalry troops from the garrison attended the event." (Adevărul)

Captain Tadeusz Plachowski was another long distance rider who rode in from Rivne in the western Ukraine, 874 kilometers away. Rachel's arrival at almost the same time "provided an opportunity for a very cordial and friendly atmosphere between France and the local Polish community." The banquet "took on a spontaneous character, fostering Franco-Polish-Romanian brotherhood." (Lech)

The fine sentiments were to ring hollow in 1940 when Romania became an ally of Germany and France and Poland fell under German occupation.

That same evening Rachel "who is also an accomplished dancer... [was] celebrated with a gala dinner on the terrace of the Dancing Brotacei-Băneasa Restaurant." The restaurant's dance pavilion was built only a year earlier and opened to great fanfare, at least in Bucharest's French-language newspaper L'Indépendance Romaine:

"Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 1st [1927], at 8 PM, the elegant Pavilion of the BROTACEI Restaurant Dancing, located on the Băneasa terraces in a magical setting, will open. Our most renowned artists have contributed their talents to the truly dazzling construction and ornamentation of this pavilion, which will captivate all of Bucharest from its inauguration."

But these were officially sponsored public events. Rachel's reception by Bucharest society, on the other hand, was distinctly frosty. The cause was a rumour about a purported interview published in an unnamed newspaper which "revealed that Rachel Dorange was Jewish and, according to the newspaper's reporter, barely spoke French and could only express herself properly when speaking Yiddish.

"With the help of an interpreter, the newspaper conducted a lengthy interview in Yiddish with Miss Dorange, who proudly declared, among other things, that she was an 'echtes jidisches Médel' ('a true Jewish girl')."

It remains an open question as to whether there was an actual newspaper report or whether a mere lie was ascribed to an unnamed newspaper to give it the mask of authenticity and then tossed into the rumour mill. In either case the rumour was false – there had been no such interview.

On June 24, a reporter from the Jewish newspaper Uj Kelet, following up on the rumour, visited Rachel in her suite on the fourth floor of the Athénée Palace. He gave her to believe that he naively accepted the rumour at face value, but this was probabaly a journalist's ploy to provoke a reaction. If so, he succeeded.

"She opens the door herself when we knock. She is wearing pink pajamas and, in keeping with Bucharest summer fashion, no stockings. Her face is tanned to a bronze red. She sits down opposite us, her legs crossed.

"The room is dimly lit, and as she sits there quietly waiting for our questions, we can hardly imagine that this thin, boyish-looking dreamer was the one who traveled from Paris to Bucharest on horseback.... Only now do we notice that she wears her hair in a bun, very neatly, but she still has long hair. She is perhaps the only woman in Bucharest today who wears her hair long.

"'Miss Dorange,' we began, 'We have come on behalf of Uj Kelet, the newspaper of the Jews of Transylvania, to welcome you, the French Jewish girl who has made this long....'

"Miss Dorange did not allow us to finish our question.

"'I'm not Jewish, I'm a true Catholic and a true Frenchwoman. My first name is Rachel, and that's why people think I'm Jewish. But I'm not Jewish.'"

The issue of Rachel's supposed ethnicity was apparently raised by journalists soon after she arrived in Bucharest and well before it coalesced into a full-blown rumour. The trigger was her Old Testament name, Rachel.

"'As soon as I arrived here, you asked me if I was Jewish. I was very surprised by this question and replied that I didn't understand how it was relevant. How can someone who has traveled three thousand kilometers on horseback be aked such a question? If I were really Jewish, would my performance be judged differently?

"'It's strange that I've traveled all over Europe, but nowhere else have I been asked such questions, nowhere else have I been asked what religion I am. Only here, immediately after my arrival, did they ask me this question.

"'I have no complaints about the official reception, since the Foreign Minister pays for my apartment, right? And Aristide Blank, whom I know from Paris, has put a car at my disposal. But the people of Bucharest have not taken any notice of me, because they think I am Jewish .... For example, in Hungary, I was showered with invitations, but here I didn't receive a single invitation, and all because they think I'm Jewish....'"

Rachel had originally planned to return from Bucharest by train but at some point she decided to make the round trip on horseback and presumably cleared this with her sponsors at Le Petit Journal. On July 22 the newspaper Adevărul reported her intention to leave Bucharest on Wednesday, July 25 at 5 a.m.

Rachel had actually made this decision almost a week earlier. On July 17 she sent another of her laconic bulletins to Le Petit Journal:

"Bucharest, 17 July. Our journey of 3,100 kilometers having ended on June 26, I intend, after a month of rest, to leave on horseback for Paris on July 25."

It was at this point she received the crowning insult: she learned that she would not be getting a cavalry escort to the Romanian border with Ukraine.

"A painful smile crosses her face. At this moment, Miss Dorange's face looks very sad and she feels alone. 'I'm traveling on tomorrow... I'm going on horseback and alone, because the officers don't want to accompany me....'" Not even, seemingly, Colonel Păun.

Regardless, the Romanian government was still determined to treat Rachel as an honoured guest. The Romanian parliament was scheduled to open on the same day as Rachel's departure but the opening was postponed so that members of parliament could bid her a suitable farewell.

According to Adevărul, "The distinguished amazon will be accompanied to Otopeni by the entire government, riding on... the situation." The "situation" was apparently a barbed reference to the Romanian government's eagerness to curry favour with France.

Given their solicitude toward Rachel, it seems incredible that the government officials would not have exerted their influence to provide her with an escort all the way to border. However, when she was interviewed in Prague more than six weeks later she still complained that the Romanian cavalry officers had refused to escort her because "they considered her to be Jewish due to her first name."