"You must hold out to the limits of possibility, and, when once they are reached, you must demand guarantees that a period of stability will then commence, for to allow oneself to be blown hither and thither like a frail reed, and to depend upon the _bon vouloir_ of each Ministry is no position for a Hohenzollern. "Under prevailing circumstances I can only give you one word of advice, and that is to lean upon Turkey: this Power has the greatest interest in the peace of Roumania--the interest of self-preservation--and she will inspire none of the other protecting States with distrust.... "Nothing can be done in the Strousberg affair; an independent court of law alone can succeed in settling this impending financial difficulty. Moreover, this Strousberg question is only an empty pretext and means of agitation against you; the whole movement in Roumania is based upon hostility towards the German dynasty, and is the result of socialist-republican intrigue!" CHAPTER V FINANCIAL TROUBLES Perhaps the chief amongst the many obstacles which beset the path of Prince Charles in his task of raising Roumania from the depth to which it had sunk was the very serious state of the national finances. The effect of the previous drains upon the country's resources, and the expense of keeping an army prepared to meet any emergency, caused by the hostile attitude of Turkey, were thus summed up by the Prince in July 1866. "The worst wound of the country is at present its finances. We have not a penny, in the literal sense of the word, and the Ministry, in order to restore the equilibrium of the Budget, has to adopt measures which will scarcely gain friends for us: the taxes have to be raised; 30 per cent. of salaries and pensions, which have not been paid for four months, have to be kept back. For my part, I have surrendered another 12,000 ducats of my Civil List. Only a loan can save us now; we are in communication with financiers, but their conditions are more than hard. With patience we shall yet escape from this calamity, but for the moment the situation is very difficult. Retrenchment must be made, wherever possible." It is interesting to note that, whilst the receipts amounted to only 56,000,000 francs in the first year of the Prince's rule, they reached the total of 180,000,000 in 1891, being thus more than trebled in twenty-five years.