let the Tsarévna bear a child.” And at the word that very instant the Tsarévna became pregnant, and in ten months she bore a son.
Then the Tsar began to ask her, “Do acknowledge with whom you have been guilty.”
Then the Tsarévna wept and swore in every way that she had been guilty with nobody. “I do not know myself,” she said, “why the Lord has chastised me.”
The Tsar asked, but found nothing out.
Soon a boy was born who grew not by days but by hours; and at the end of a week he could already talk. So the Tsar summoned all the boyárs and the senators from every part of the kingdom to show them the youth, but none of them acknowledged that he was the father.
“No,” the boy answered, “none of them is my father.”
Then the Tsar bade the maids of honour and attendants take him up to every courtyard, through all the streets, and to show him to all manner of people. So the attendants and maids of honour took the youth through all the courtyards, through all the streets they went. But the boy said nothing.
At last they came to the poor peasant’s hut. As soon as the boy saw that peasant, he at once stretched out his little hands and said “Tyátya, Tyátya!” Then they told the Emperor of this, and they summoned the poor man into the palace, and the Tsar began to inquire of him, “Acknowledge on oath, is this your boy?”
“No, he is God’s son.”
Then the Tsar was angry and married the poor man to the Princess, and after the wedding he set them both with the child in a big tub, smeared it with tar, and sent it out into the open sea. So the tub sailed on the open sea, and the boisterous winds carried and bore it to a distant shore. When the poor man heard that the water no longer moved under them, he said: