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222 one more effort, turned round once more, and, as fire leaps to the eyes, he instantly kissed and smacked Eléna the Fair on the lips. "Who is it! Who is it! Catch him!" For his very trace had vanished. Then he leapt back to his father's grave, and he let his horse free into the open field; and he then bowed down to the earth and asked advice of his father, and the old man gave him advice. Ványa went back home as though he had never been there; and the brothers told him where they had been, what they had done and seen; and he listened as though he had never heard of it before.

There was another bout next day, and you could never see an end of the boyárs and the lords seated at the royal palace. The elder brothers started out, and the younger brother set out on foot secretly and quietly, just as though he had never kissed the Tsarévna, and he stopped in his distant corner. Eléna Tsarévna was asking for her bridegroom; Eléna Tsarévna was wishing to show him to the whole world, desiring to give him the half of her kingdom; but never a bridegroom appeared. They were looking for him in the midst of the boyárs, in the midst of the generals; and they went to them all, but they could not find him. But Ványa looked on and smiled, and waited until his bride came to him. For he said, "I won her like a knight; now she is to love me in my kaftán"

So she got up, looked out of the open windows, glanced through them all, and then she saw and recognised her bridegroom, took him to herself, and soon the betrothal took place. And oh, what a fine young man he was—so sensible, brave, and so handsome! He used to sit on his flying horse, undo his cap, put his arms a-kimbo; and he seemed like a king, like the reigning king; and you looked on, and you would never have imagined that at one time he could ever have been poor Vanyúshka.