chen, and
there was his old woman, in a dress of rich brocade, sitting idle in a
tall carved chair, and giving orders right and left.

"Good health to you, wife," says the old man.

"Ah, you, clown that you are, how dare you call me your wife! Can't
you see that I'm a lady? Here! Off with this fellow to the stables,
and see that he gets a beating he won't forget in a hurry."

Instantly the servants seized the old man by the collar and lugged him
along to the stables. There the grooms treated him to such a whipping
that he could hardly stand on his feet. After that the old woman made
him doorkeeper. She ordered that a besom should be given him to clean
up the courtyard, and said that he was to have his meals in the
kitchen. A wretched life the old man lived. All day long he was
sweeping up the courtyard, and if there was a speck of dirt to be seen
in it anywhere, he paid for it at once in the stable under the whips
of the grooms.

Time went on, and the old woman grew tired of being only a lady. And
at last there came a day when she sent into the yard to tell the old
man to come before her. The poor old man combed his hair and cleaned
his boots, and came into the house, and bowed low before the old
woman.

"Be off with you, you old good-for-nothing!" says she. "Go and find
your golden fish, and tell him from me that I am tired of being a
lady. I want to be Tzaritza, with generals and courtiers and men of
state to do whatever I tell them."

The old man went along to the seashore, glad enough to be out of the
courtyard and out of reach of the stablemen with their whips. He came
to the shore, and cried out in his windy old voice,--

"Head in air and tail in sea,
Fish, fish, listen to me."

And there was the golden fish looking at him with its wise eyes.

"What's the matter now, old man?" says the fish.

"My old woman is going on worse than ever," says the old fisherman.
"My back is sore with the whips of her grooms. And now she says it
isn't enough for her to be a lady; she wants to be a Tzaritza."

"Never you worry about it," says the fish. "Go home and praise God;"
and with that the fish turned over and went down into the sea.

The old man went home slowly, for he did not know what his wife would
do to him if the golden fish did not make her into a Tzaritza.

But as soon as he came near he heard the noise of trumpets and the
beating of drums, and there where the fine stone house had been was
now a