"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 great palace with a golden roof. Behind it was a big garden of