The Tsar and the Angel

Then he laid him down beneath a tree, and so he passed the night, and rising up very early, fared on his way straight before him.

At last he came to a third brick-kiln, but he did not tell the brick-burners there that he was the Tsar. All he thought of now was how he might reach his capital. The people here, too, treated him kindly, and seeing that his feet were lame and bruised, they had compassion upon him, and gave him a pair of very, very old boots. And he asked them, “Do ye know by which way I can get to the capital?” They told him, but it was a long, long journey that would take the whole day.

So he went the way they had told him, and he went on and on till he came to a little town, and there the roadside sentries stopped him. “Halt!” they cried. He halted. “Your passport!”––“I have none.”––“What! no passport? Then thou art a vagabond. Seize him!” they cried. So they seized him and put him in a dungeon. Shortly after they came to examine him, and asked him, “Whence art thou?”––“From such and such a capital,” said he. Then they ordered him to be put in irons and taken thither.

So they took him back to that capital and put him in another dungeon. Then the custodians came round to examine the prisoners, and one said one thing and one said another, till at last it came to the turn of the Tsar.––“Who art thou, old man?” they asked. Then he told them the whole truth. “Once I was the Tsar,” said he, and he related all that had befallen him. Then they were much amazed, for he was not at all like a Tsar. For indeed he had been growing thin and haggard for a long time, and his beard was all long and tangled. And yet, for all that, he stood them out that he was the Tsar. So they made up their minds that he was crazy, and drove him away. “Why should we keep this fool for ever,” said they, “and waste the Tsar’s bread upon him?” So they let him go, and never did any man feel so wretched on God’s earth as did that wretched Tsar. Willingly would he have done any sort of work if he had only known how, but he had never been used to work, so he had to go along begging his bread, and could scarce beg enough to keep body and soul together.