“It was money! I had much money: I gave none to the poor, two pots of it did I bury underground. See now, they are going to torment me, to beat me with sticks, to tear me with nails.”
“Whatever shall I do?” cried the Fiddler. “Perhaps they’ll take to torturing me too!”
“If you go and sit on the stove behind the chimney-pipe, and don’t eat anything for three years—then you will remain safe.”
The Fiddler hid behind the stove-pipe. Then came fiends,[393] and they began to beat the rich moujik, reviling him the while, and saying:
“There’s for thee, O rich man. Pots of money didst thou bury but thou couldst not hide them. There didst thou bury them that we might not be able to keep watch over them. At the gate people are always riding about, the horses crush our heads with their hoofs, and in the corn-kiln we get beaten with flails.”
As soon as the fiends had gone away the moujik said to the Fiddler:
“If you get out of here, tell my children to dig up the money—one pot is buried at the gate, and the other in the corn-kiln—and to distribute it among the poor.”
Afterwards there came a whole roomful of evil ones, and they asked the rich moujik:
“What have you got here that smells so Russian?”
“You have been in Russia and brought away a Russian smell with you,” replied the moujik.