A long time ago, far from our days, in a certain tsardom in a certain Empire lived a famous Tsar Afron Afronovich, and he had three youthful sons: the eldest the Tsarevich Dimitry, the second the Tsarevich Vasily, and the youngest the Tsarevich Ivan. The sons of Afron were all grown up; the youngest had reached his seventeenth year, while Tsar Afron himself had left sixty years behind him. And once, as Tsar Afron fell a-thinking and looked at his sons, his heart grew sad: "Look now!" thought he, "life is a good thing to these youths, and they rejoice in God's fair world; but, as for me, I feel old age drawing nigh, and divers diseases begin to afflict me, and the wide world has now but little delight for me. How will it be with me henceforth? How shall I escape old age?" Thus he thought and thought, and so he fell asleep. And a vision appeared to the Tsar. Somewhere or other beyond lands thrice-nine, in the Empire of Thrice-ten, dwelt the Tsarevna Loveliness-Inexhaustible, the daughter of three mothers, the granddaughter of three grandmothers, the sister of nine brothers; and under the pillow of this Tsarevna was preserved a flask of living-water, and whoever drank of this water instantly became thirty years younger. No sooner did the Tsar Afron awake from his sleep, than he called together his children and the wise men of his realm, and said to them: "Interpret me this dream, ye my sages and cunning counsellors. What shall I do, and how can I discover this Tsarevna?" The sages were silent. The cunning counsellors stroked their long gray beards, looked up and down, scratched their heads, and thus they answered the Tsar Afron: "Oh, Sovereign Tsar! though we have not seen this thing with our eyes, yet our ears have heard of this Tsarevna Loveliness-Inexhaustible; but how to find her, and which way to get at her, that we know not." No sooner did the three Tsarevichs hear this, when with one voice they thus implored their father the Tsar: "Dear father Tsar! give us thy blessing, and send us to the four corners of the earth, that we may see people and show ourselves and discover the Tsarevna Loveliness-Inexhaustible." The father agreed, gave them provision for the journey, took leave of them tenderly, and sent them off to the four corners of the earth. When the two elder brothers got beyond the city gates they turned to the right, but the youngest brother, the Tsarevich Ivan, turned to the left. The elder brothers had got only a hundred miles and no more from home, when they met an old man, and he asked them: "Whither are ye going, young men? Is your journey far?"--But the Tsareviches replied: "Take yourself off, old rogue! What business is it of yours?" The old man said nothing but went on his way. The Tsareviches went on and on, all that day and the next and a whole week, and they came to such a wilderness that they could see neither earth nor sky, nor any living being, nor any habitation; and in the deepest depth of this