Page:Iván Ilyitch and Other Stories (1887).djvu/12

vi phy, all of these fifteen tales were written as tracts for the people, illustrated in many cases with quaint wood-cuts. This form of composition was very likely suggested to Count Tolstoï by the popular tales that have been in vogue in Russia for three or four hundred years.

Such, for example, is the fifteenth-century ‘‘Story of Vasarga the Merchant,’’ in which the child Mudro-muisl, or Wise Thought, solves the riddles of the wicked Tsar Nesmian. This grim but dull-minded tyrant treats Dmitri Vasarga hospitably; but when the guest, in reply to his question, ‘‘What is thy religion?’’ doughtily replies, ‘‘I am of the Christian religion, of the city of Kief, the little merchant Dmitri; and I believe in one God,—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’’ he is given one of these choices: to adopt the false religion of the grim tsar, and have great honor; to solve three riddles, or, if he fail to solve the riddles, and still stand firm, to go to prison, and starve to death. It is Mudro-muisl who saves his father’s wealth and health. He puts the tyrant to shame, is elected to the throne by a vote of the people, who were Christian at heart in spite of their tsar, and, having released from the noisome dungeon the three hundred and thirty starving merchants who had been true to their faith, he establishes free trade, and becomes a prosperous and admirable prince,—a most suggestive and inspiring story for any nation that had lurking desires for democracy. Its moral is simply this: that