“Why are you so grieved, Iván Tsarévich?”

“O Vasilísa the Wise, I am afflicted for my father and my mother, and desire to behold Holy Russia.”

“If we go away there will be a mighty chase after us. The Sea Tsar will be wroth, and will give us over to death. We must be cunning.” So Vasilísa spat in three corners, and the doors of her room opened, and she, with Iván Tsarévich, ran into Sacred Russia. On the second day, very early, an embassy came from the Sea Tsar to catch the young couple and to summon them into the palace, and they knocked on the door: “Wake up, get up from your sleep; your father is calling you.”

“It is yet early: we have not yet had our sleep; come later on,” one pool answered.

Then the ambassadors retired, and they waited one hour and another hour, and they knocked again: “This is not the time and season to sleep; this is the time and season to get up.”