“All right!” the unknown man said to him. “Let us first eat up my wafers, and leave your biscuits for a dessert.”
So they ate the wafers, ate them all up, and they were fully sated, and there were still wafers over.
So the pope became envious. “Why,” he thought, “I will steal them.” The old man lay down to sleep after dinner, and the pope was all agog to see how he could steal those wafers. The old man went to sleep; so the pope abstracted the wafers from his pocket and silently began eating them.
The old man woke up and felt for his wafers, and could not find them anywhere. “Where are my wafers? Who has eaten them up? Have you, pope?”
“No, I did not,” answered the pope.
“Well, all right; I don’t mind.”
So they shook themselves up, and they went on their way and journey, went on and on, and the roads suddenly divided and they came to a carfax. So they both went on a single road and arrived at a kingdom. Now, in this kingdom the Tsar’s daughter was near her death, and the Tsar had promised any one who should cure her half of his reign and rule and realm; but any one who failed was to have his head cut off and placed on a pole.
When they arrived in front of the Tsar’s courtyard, they got themselves up finely, and they called themselves doctors. The henchmen sallied out of the Tsar’s courtyard, and asked them: “What sort of people are you? What is your race? What is your city? What do you require?”
“We,” they answered, “are doctors, and we can cure the Tsarévna.”
“Well, if you are doctors, come into the palace.”