"Good," says the Fool. "Send the food along, and we'll know what to do with it."
So they brought twelve oxen roasted whole, and as much bread as could be baked in forty ovens, and the companions had scarcely sat down to the meal before the Eater had finished the lot.
"Why," said the Eater, "what a little! They might have given us a decent meal while they were about it."
The Tzar told his servant to tell the Fool that he and his companions were to drink forty barrels of wine, with forty bucketfuls in every barrel.
The Listener told the Fool what message was coming.
"Why," says the Fool, "I never in my life drank more than one bucket at a time."
"Don't worry," says the Drinker. "You forget that I am thirsty. It'll be nothing of a drink for me."
They brought the forty barrels of wine, and tapped them, and the Drinker tossed them down one after another, one gulp for each barrel. "Little enough," says he, "Why, I am thirsty still."
"Very good," says the Tzar to his servant, when he heard that they had eaten all the food and drunk all the wine. "Tell the fellow to get ready for the wedding, and let him go and bathe himself in the bath-house. But let the bathhouse be made so hot that the man will stifle and frizzle as soon as he sets foot inside. It is an iron bath-house. Let it be made red hot."