amazed, took the fair maiden by the hand, said to her in a kindly voice, "I must for your goodness love your beauty: will you be my wife and the Tsarítsa of my fair realm?"
"Tsar, your Majesty," answered the fair maiden, "it is your imperial will, but it is the father's will which is law amongst the daughters, and the blessing of their mother. If my father will, if my mother will bless me, I will."
Then the father bowed down to earth, and he sent for the mother, and the mother blessed her.
"Yet I have one word more for you," said the fair maiden to the Tsar: "Do not separate my kin from me, let my mother and my father and my sisters remain with me."
Then the sisters bowed down to her feet, and said, "We are not worthy!"
"It has all been forgotten, my beloved sisters," she said to them; "ye are my kin, ye are not strangers. He who bears in mind an ill bygone has lost his sight." And as she said this, she smiled and raised her sisters up.
And her sisters wept from sheer emotion, as the rivers flow, and would not rise from the ground.
Then the Tsar bade them rise and looked on them kindly, bidding them remain in the city.
There was a feast in the palace: the front steps glittered and glowed as though with flame, like the sun enwreathed in his beams. The Tsar and the Tsarítsa sat on a chariot, and the earth trembled, and the people ran up crying out, "Long live the Tsar and Tsarítsa!"
