"Merciful God!", prayed the princess, "Let but a little cloud appear when I have found the river that is to help us!" But no cloud appeared, and she was forced to seek further and further. She was wandering for a second time up the banks of the Argesch, and was just about to turn sadly back, when she caught sight of the mouth of a little stream that she had not noticed before. Too tired to investigate, she lay herself to sleep beside the river.
When she awoke the next morning, the river was no longer brown, but clear and blue as the air, and at the bottom of the water something shone and glittered as the sunbeams themselves. She girt up her garments and waded in to find out what it was that shone with so wondrous a gleam. And lo! it was pure gold. She fell on her knees, right there in the stream, and gave God thanks, aloud and earnestly. She had found gold and now she could finally help. The princess went carefully on through the water and gathered up the golden grains and little fragments, filling her mantle with them until the burden was almost too heavy to bear. Then, she hurried home with her treasure and poured it out before her husband. Her children were yet alive, though weak and sorely exhausted. They scarcely knew her again, so emaciated and sunburnt she was. With the treasure, they sent forth messengers into distant lands to buy corn, maize and hay, seeds and cattle; and the river never grew weary of giving gold until the famine was at an end, and laughing, green, and sleek cattle covered the Romanian meadows once more.