The Tsar said to the doctors: “What good thing do you desire⁠—gold or silver? Ask and you shall have.” So they began to bring gold and silver. And the old man took as much as he could take with his thumb and two fingers, but the pope took it by handfuls, and he rammed it all into his wallet and hid it away, concealed it, lifted it up as much as ever his power could.

The old man then said to the pope: “Let us bury all the money in the earth and again go a-healing.”

So they went on and went on, and they arrived at another kingdom in which there also was a princess on the verge of death, and the Tsar promised anyone who should cure her half of his realm and rule and reign; but anyone who failed was to have his head cut off.