Page:RussianFolkTales Afanasev 368pgs.djvu/226

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RUSSIAN FOLK-TALES

to speak: "How can this poor man name me his wife? I must inform the Tsar and have him punished." And she bade him be beaten with whips mercilessly, without informing the Tsar. He was pitilessly beaten, and was scarcely left alive, and could hardly leave the town. He wept and sobbed, and remembered the words of the Gospel: He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. And he spoke to a pope of this, how he had profaned the Sacred Book, and had sent the priest into the dark dungeon, and had gone a long, long way.

And the Tsarítsa spoke to the angel who was taking the shape of the Tsar: "Thou, my dear lord, for one year hast not slept with me. How can I, then, be thine?" And the Tsar spake to her: "I have made a covenant with God that for three years I will not sleep with thee nor share thy bed." And he left her and went into the Tsar's palace.

Angéy the Tsar arrived in an unknown town and engaged himself with a peasant to reap the harvest; and he did not know how to do a peasant's work; and the peasant discharged him, and he began to weep and sob, and went on his way from that city. And poor men met him on the road. He said to them: "Will ye take me up with ye? I am now a poor man, and do not know how to work, and I am ashamed to beg. What ye bid of me I will do. I will work for you." And they accepted him and gave him a burden to carry. And they went to lie at night, and they bade him heat the bath, carry water, and lay the bed. And Tsar Angéy wept bitterly: "Woe to me ! What have I done! I was wroth with the Sovereign, and He has deprived me of my kingdom and has brought me to ruin, and I have suffered all this through the word of the Gospel."

In the morning the poor men got up, and they arrived at his own city of Filuyán. And they reached the abode