In ancient times, a rich man kept a poor man as his worker. For nine years the poor man bent his back on the rich man, but did not get out of debt. He did not have any bread to feed his family; not a single animal to wander around the yard; no dog to bark into the wolfish night.
One day a poor man was threshing his master's bread in the moonlight and saw two little boys in the field. They collected the dropped spikelets and stuck them into the sheaves. The poor man was very surprised, hid near a haystack and, when the boys approached him, grabbed them by the hands.
- Who are you? - asks. - Why do you go around at night, gather ears of corn and stick them into sheaves?
“We are a rich man’s happiness,” the boys answer. “We are picking up everything that he will lose or may lose.”
-Have you seen my Happiness? Do I have any helpers like you? - asks the poor man.
“You don’t have such helpers,” the boys answer. - Worse than that: for nine years now, a wretched grief has been living in your house, and until you get rid of it, you will never see Happiness like your ears.
- How can I free myself from this miserable grief?
“Stop threshing and leave the rich man,” the boys instruct the poor man. - When you start to get ready, the unfortunate Woe will crawl out from behind the stove and ask you to take him with you. don’t rush to refuse, put Grief in a barrel, seal the barrel and bury it in a deserted place. And then take your wife and children and go to the city. There you will have the opportunity to dig a well for a noble dignitary. Keep your eyes open and you will see a precious stone at the bottom of the well. He will bring Happiness to your home.
The poor man threshed his master's bread and began to get ready for the city. He took a horse and cart from good people, put his wife and four of his children on the cart, and was about to lock the house, when suddenly he heard crying on the cold stove.
The poor man returned and saw that a child was sitting on the stove, not a child, an old man, not an old man, but a peasant as big as his elbows, and he was crying bitterly.
“You forgot to take me with you,” he says.
“If I put you on a cart and take you to the city in front of everyone, people will start laughing at me: they say, a poor man cannot part with his wretched grief, he drags you everywhere with him.” Sit in the barrel, no one will see you there.
Grief agreed, climbed into the barrel, and the poor man closed it tightly, took it to a vacant lot and buried it at the foot of a large mountain.
So a poor man came to the city. As soon as he arrived at the market, he met a rich dignitary and agreed to dig a well for him.
The poor man digs for a week, digs for another, but there is still no water.
-What the hell is this? - he says to his wife. “Soon I’ll walk right through the ground, but I don’t even smell water.” The dignitary will not pay me a penny for such work. What am I going to feed my children?
The next day the tip of the shovel came across something hard. A dazzling spark flashed and did not go out. The poor man looked, and this was a precious stone shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow.
The poor man wrapped the find in a rag and took it to the most learned man in the city. The scientist turned the stone in his hands and led the poor man to the ruler of the city. The poor man became intimidated when he crossed the threshold of the Khan's palace. but the ruler, having heard about the rare find, ordered a mine to be built on the site of the well, and appointed a poor man to look after the mine, making him a dignitary.
The rich man who lived with Happiness heard about this and was quite surprised. He went to the city, found his former employee, and began asking questions:
- Tell me, how did you manage to get rich so quickly?
“I was threshing your bread,” the former poor man began to tell, “and I saw two little boys.” They collected the fallen ears of corn and stuck them into the sheaves. I caught the boys, and they taught me how to get rid of Grief. I planted my poor grief in an empty barrel, caulked it and buried it in a vacant lot at the foot of a high mountain. And about my Happiness – that’s another conversation. Everyone has their own Happiness, and you are not left out of it.
“Maybe it’s yours, but your Happiness is better,” the rich man envied, returning home. He saw a wasteland at the foot of a large mountain, dug up a buried barrel and released Mountain into the wild.
“Return,” he says, “to your master.”
“I won’t go,” Grief became stubborn. “He will put me in a barrel again and bury me in the ground.” I'd rather stay with you.
With these words, the unfortunate Mountain grabbed the rich man’s cart and came with him to the farmstead. The rich man entered the house, and Grief followed him.
Since then, no matter how much good the rich Happiness brought, everything was blown away by the wretched Grief.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru