Page:The Russian story book, containing tales from the song-cycles of Kiev and Novgorod and other early sources.djvu/199



THE GOLDEN HORDE

lost no occasion of making a royal feast, and his banquets were the admiration of Holy Russia and of all the white world. To one banquet he invited a large number of princes, nobles, mighty heroes and their body-guards, as well as a company of merchant princes who had bought land with their wealth in order that they might be accounted gentlemen. The host made good cheer, the food was of the richest, the wine of the greenest, and the white oak tables gleamed like the newly fallen snow on the wide steppe. The stove glowed fiercely, and Ilya sat in the great corner honoured of all.

As the wine-cup passed, the heart of Prince Vladimir grew more and more generous, and he gave cities to one prince, towns to a second, villages to a third, and hamlets to another; but to Ilya he gave a cloak of marten skins with a collar of sables. Then the hero arose, left the banquet-hall with the cloak held out at arm's length from him, and came at last to the kitchen. There he dragged the cloak about the brick floor by one sleeve as if he wished to defoul it and said savagely: 177