Page:The Russian story book, containing tales from the song-cycles of Kiev and Novgorod and other early sources.djvu/296

 Rich Guest, for though the Water Tsar makes merry in his palace below, in the upper borders of his realm there is trouble enough and to spare."

All at once Sadko stopped playing, broke his harp and snapped its golden strings, and when the Water Tsar commanded him to play for two hours more, he told him boldly that the instrument was broken.

"But I have sea-smiths here," said His Watery Majesty, "who can mend a broken pearl, so that it would be an easy thing for them to restore a harp-string."

"All the sea-smiths of your ocean realm," said Sadko, "could not revive music that is lost. That can only be done in Holy Russia, when the maker of the music comes once more to his own home."

"Talk not of land kingdoms," said the Tsar, whirling round Sadko in the hope of regaining the step which he had lost, but finding it impossible to dance without music. "Stay with me and wed some beautiful sea-maiden. Take your choice from the maids in the train of my queen."

Seeing that he was in the power of the Water Tsar, Sadko promised to do so, and asked the advice of the quiet-eyed Water Tsaritza, who gave it in her own compelling voice, so that Sadko felt that it was a command. "Do not choose," she said, "any sea-maid from the first three hundred which the Tsar will marshal before you, but let them pass by in all their beauty. Do not choose from the second three hundred, but let them pass in all their loveliness.