"My affair is proceeding favourably. I will now ruin Iván completely, as I have ruined Tarás, and will buy him up, guts and all." As soon as the fools had any gold, they gave it all away to their women for necklaces, and their girls wove it into their braids, and the children began to play in the streets with those pretty things. When all had enough of it, they refused to get any more. The clean-looking gentleman's palace was not half done, and the grain and the cattle were not yet attended to for the year. And the gentleman demanded that they should go and work for him, and haul his grain, and drive his cattle; he promised them much gold for everything and for all work. But no one came to work, and they brought nothing to him. Only now and then a boy or girl would run in to exchange an egg for a gold coin; otherwise nobody came, and he had nothing to eat. The clean-looking gentleman was starved, and he went to the village to buy something to eat: he went into one yard, and offered a gold coin for a chicken, but the woman would not take it. "I have too many of them as it is," she said. He went to a homeless woman, to buy a herring of her, and offered her a gold coin. "I do not want it, dear man," she said. "I have no children, and so there is nobody to play with it; I myself have three of these for show." He went to a peasant to buy bread of him, but the peasant, too, would not take the money. "I do not want it," he said. "If you want bread, for Christ's sake, wait, and I will have my wife cut you off a piece." The devil just spit out and ran away from the peasant. Not only would he not take anything for Christ's sake, but it was worse than cutting him even to hear that word. And so he did not get any bread. Everywhere it was the same; no matter where the devil went, they gave him nothing for money, but said: "Bring us something else, or come and work for it, or take it for Christ's sake!" But the devil had nothing but money. He did not like to work, and for Christ's sake he could not take anything. The old devil grew angry. "What else do you want, if I give you money? You can buy anything for money, or hire a labourer." The fools paid no attention to him. "No," they said, "we do not want it. We have no taxes and no wages to pay, so what do we want with the money?" The old devil went to bed without eating supper. This affair reached the ears of Iván the Fool. They went to ask him: "What shall we do? A clean-looking gentleman has appeared among us: he is fond of eating and drinking, and does not like to work, and does not beg for Christ's sake, but only offers us gold pieces. So long as we did not have enough of them, we gave him everything, but now we do not give him any more. What shall we do with him? We are afraid that he will starve." Iván listened to what they had to say. "All right," he said, "we shall have to feed him. Let him go from farm to farm as a shepherd!"