Note 6 — The Enchanted Ring.

Vaska and Jurka set off to bring their master the wonder-working ring. Whether they took a long time or a short time matters not, but they arrived at last, and ran to the tower in which Martin was put to die from starvation. The cat immediately climbed up to the window, and called to its master, “Art thou alive, Martin the widow’s son?”—“I am scarce able to keep body and soul together. This is the third day I have been sitting here without bread.”—“Well, thy woes are over now. There will be a feast in your street now6; we have brought you your ring.” Martin was overjoyed, and began to stroke the cat, and the cat rubbed itself against him, and began purring its own little songs through its nose; but at the bottom of the tower Jurka was leaping and whining and barking for joy, and leaping high in the air. Martin took the ring and turned it from one hand to the other. The twelve youths immediately appeared: “What is thy pleasure, and what thy command?”—“Give me to eat and drink till I can eat and drink no more, and let cunning music be played on the top of this tower to me all day.” When the music began to play, the good folks hastened to the King, and told him that little Martin was up to no good in the tower there. “He ought to have ceased to be among the living long ago,” they said, “and yet he is having such a merry time of it on the top of the tower. They are stamping with their feet, and knocking their plates, and clashing their glasses, and such splendid music is playing, that you can’t help listening to it.” The King sent an express messenger to the tower, and there he stood and listened to the music; the King sent his highest officer, and there they all remained standing, and opened wide their ears. The King himself went to the tower, and the music seemed to turn him into a statue. But little Martin again called his twelve youths, and said to them, “Restore my old palace, as it was before; throw a crystal bridge across from it to the royal palace; let the former five-storeyed cathedral stand by the side of the palace; and let my faithless wife also be found in the palace.” And while he was yet expressing the wish, the whole thing was done. And he went out of the tower, took his father-in-law the King by the hand, led him into the palace, led him up to the sleeping-chamber, where the Princess, in fear and trembling, awaited an evil death, and said to the King, “My dear little father-in-law, a great deal of trouble and anguish has befallen me from living with thy daughter; what shall we sentence her to?”—“My dear son-in-law, let mercy prevail over justice; exhort her with good words, and live with her as heretofore.” And Martin listened to his father-in-law, upbraided his wife for her treachery, and to the end of his life he never parted with the ring, nor with Jurka and Vaska, and saw no more misery.