an story see A. de Gubernatis, "Zool.
Mythology," i. 85.]

Of this story there are many variants. In one of them[325] a king
promises to reward with vast wealth anyone who will find him "a bride
fairer than the sun, brighter than the moon, and whiter than snow." A
certain moujik, named Nikita Koltoma, offers to show him where a
princess lives who answers to this description, and goes forth with
him in search of her. On the way, Nikita enters several forges,
desiring to have a war mace cast for him, and in one of them he finds
fifty smiths tormenting an old man. Ten of them are holding him by the
beard with pincers, the others are thundering away at his ribs with
their hammers. Finding that the cause of this punishment is an unpaid
debt of fifty roubles, Nikita ransoms the greybeard, who straightway
disappears. Nikita obtains the mace he wants, which weighs fifty
poods, or nearly a ton, and leaves the forge. Presently the old man
whom he has ransomed comes running up to him, thanks him for having
rescued him from a punishment which had already lasted thirty years,
and bestows on him, as a token of gratitude, a Cap of Invisibility.

Soon after this Nikita, attended by the king and his followers,
reaches the palace of the royal heroine, Helena the Fair. She at first
sends her warriors to capture or slay the unwelcome visitors, but
Nikita attacks them with his mace, and leaves scarce one alive. Then
she invites the king and his suite to the palace, having prepared in
the mean time a gigantic bow fitted with a fiery arrow, wherewith to
annihilate her guests. Guessing this, Nikita puts on his Cap of
Invisibility, bends the bow, and shoots the arrow into the queen's
_terema_ [the women's chambers], and in a moment the whole upper story
is in a blaze. After that the queen submits, and is married to the
king.

But Nikita warns him that for three nights running his bride will
make trial of his strength by laying her hand on his breast and
pressing it hard--so hard that he will not be able to bear the
pressure. When that happens, he must slip out of the room, and let
Nikita take his place. All this comes to pass; the bride lays her hand
on the bridegroom's breast, and says--

"Is my hand heavy?"

"As a feather on water!" replies the king, who can scarcely draw his
breath beneath the crushing weight of the hand he has won. Then he
leaves the room, under the pretext of giving an order, and Nikita
takes his place. The qu