Not far from the pretty little mountain-town of Câmpa Lungo, a clear, cool stream winds along, called Rîul Doamnei—“the river of the Princess.” This stream washes down gold along its bed, sometimes a bit half the size of one’s nail; and it was a custom in times gone by that all the gold found there should belong to the Princess, the wife of the ruler of the land. And this is the reason why:—
There was once a great famine in the land of Roumania, such a famine as had never been known in the memory of man. First the locusts had come into the land, in such swarms that the sun was darkened, and wherever they settled they devastated everything, so that in a few minutes the fairest field of corn would be left bald as a threshing-floor, and the trees, stripped of every leaf, stretched out their naked boughs against the summer sky, beneath whose cloudless blue the heat grew ever greater and greater, so that even at night there was no longer a breath of coolness in the air. As soon as all things around were devoured, the cloud of locusts would arise, only to settle instantly again upon the next green patch. And so it went on unceasingly; and in those days folk were not so clever as they are now, when they cover the great stretches of land where the insects have settled, with petroleum, and set it all on fire. Nor were there then any cannon with which they could shoot into the swarm of flying locusts, as they do now, and so sometimes contrive to scatter them.
After the locusts came the Poles from the North, the Hungarians from the West, and the Turks from the South, and fell upon the land, and by them all the houses were burnt and the cattle stolen away. At last these foes, too, quitted the country, but they left behind them fever and pestilence, both among man and beast.
Men went about with blackened lips, and grievous sores on their bodies. The cattle perished together in heaps on the barren fields, where not a single blade of grass was standing. Only the dogs and the ravens were in good case; they tore the flesh from the bones of the dead creatures, and for miles around nothing was to be seen but white bones with red flesh hanging to them, and millions of flies, that shone with gorgeous prismatic colours, settling upon them.
The air quivered with heat, and pestilential odours spread far over the land, so that men were stricken as with a plague, and died in a few hours.
Complaints were heard no longer, for dull despair had reduced all men to silence; and when the starving people tore one another to pieces, no one even told of it.
The bells rang no more; there was no keeping Sundays or holidays, nor was there any work done, for no one had any oxen for the ploughing, or any seeds to sow.
Men crept about like ghosts, with their bones staring through the skin, their lips drawn back so that the teeth lay bare, and only a few rags upon their bodies. There was hardly any one found to bury the dead, and many remained lying, like the cattle, upon the fields.
The beautiful Princess Irina felt her heart breaking for pity. She had given away all her jewels for the poor; she had spent her last coin to buy cattle for the peasants, but they had all been slain by the plague as soon as purchased. She had fed the hungry, till she had scarcely enough left to feed her own four little children. She stood at her window wringing her hands in despair, and prayed thus:
“O good God! hast Thou, then, quite forsaken me? Wilt Thou bring our poor land to destruction? Have we sinned yet more, that we must endure such searchings-out of Thy wrath?”