The rich vizier had an only son, a modest young man with exemplary behavior. But one day the old vizier was struck by a fatal illness. There's nothing you can do - old age is no joy. The vizier understood that his last hour had struck, called his wife to him and addressed her with these words:
“I feel like I won’t be able to get out of bed.” A little more - and I will move to another world. Thank God, we have a good son, but who knows what he will become, because a person is an unsolved mystery, and even more so a young man with a hot head. You never know what he might come up with, he will squander the inheritance, and then you will have a hard time in your old age. That’s why I want you to take these three keys to the secret rooms and keep them like a shrine. Keep it with you, and you will never need anything.
The vizier's wife accepted the keys, and a few days later the old vizier died.
The son, as custom required, gave his father a magnificent funeral. Every day he visited his father’s grave and every day he read a new prayer there.
The vizier kept three servants; all three received a large salary, but on his deathbed the vizier forgot about them and did not leave any orders. The servants were worried: how could the young master not want to pay them the salary that the old vizier had set? They began to wonder how they could cleverly lure money out of the young man and get away with this money as quickly as possible. Then a cunning thought struck the youngest of the servants, and he said:
- Calm down! I’ll get the vizier’s son drunk, and he’ll pay us our salaries in full. Hey! Don't get away with it, my dear, we will fish out at least half of his fortune!
The next day, the vizier’s son went, as usual, to read prayers at his father’s grave, and a servant with a jug of brandy in a bundle sneaked into the cemetery after him. The young man began to pray, and the servant sat down nearby on someone’s tombstone, crossed his legs, carefully untied the shawl in which there was a jug, and began to sip brandy. The vizier's son noticed the servant, but did not want to interrupt the prayer, and when he finished it, he asked:
- What are you doing here?
“Well,” the servant answers him, “my father is buried in this grave, and I sit and watch how good he is there in paradise among God’s saints.”
- Listen, how do you manage to see your father when he is in the next world? Every day I come to the cemetery and read prayers, but I still don’t see my father!
- Dear heir! If only you could take a sip of the wonderful water and see your father!
The young man was curious about what this wonderful water was and asked the servant for a sip, but the servant replied:
- Uh, no, I can’t! Voditsa is very expensive!
- Well, so what of it! I'll pay! Father, thank God, left me enough money and all kinds of goods. Thank God I don’t have to skimp!
- Well, if so, I agree. Pay ten ducats and drain the jug with one spirit - and then you will see your father!
- Keep the money! - the young man exclaimed and counted out ten ducats to the servant, and then raised the jug to his lips and drained it to the bottom.
Drank brandy. The vizier's son forgot about the priest and the saints. In the blink of an eye I got drunk. He drank until the evening, the next day in the morning he took up drinking again and soon turned into a bitter drunkard - there was no worse person in the whole city. A real drunkard! Sometimes he would sell a piece of land - and go straight to the tavern, and would not get out of there until he had spent everything to the last penny. So days after days passed, and the vizier’s son wasted his land. In a few years he squandered all his father's inheritance and fell into extreme poverty. Not knowing where to go, out of desperation he hired himself into a bakery. But even here he did not fit in, he did not make a good baker, and the owner put him behind the counter to sell bread. Meanwhile, the city somehow learned that the vizier’s widow had secret rooms; People began to whisper about them, and the rumor reached the vizier’s son. One day he came to his mother and asked to give him the key to at least one secret room. Well, the mother, like all mothers, took pity on her son and gave him the key. The young man opened the door, and what did he see! There is a chest in the middle of the room - not a chest, but a pathetic wreck - and a gypsy wouldn’t give a penny for it! The chest is empty; Only in one compartment was there a wallet lying around.
“That’s the thing!” thought the young man. “It means that my father was once as poor as I am. Well, okay. I’ll take the wallet. I’ll keep the master’s money in it!” And he put the wallet in his pocket.
He returned to the shop and began putting money into his wallet - what a miracle! Throws pennies, and they turn into gold ducats.
- Allah rahmetile! God rest his soul! — the young man said to himself, rejoicing. “My father left me such wealth that I will never spend it!”
The next day in the morning, the herald announced to the people that the Sultan was giving his daughter in marriage and therefore allowed the townspeople to pass in front of the bride - whoever makes her laugh will get her as a wife. For the right to cross the threshold of her chamber, everyone must pay ten wallets of money. The vizier's son barely listened to the herald, ran to the palace, counted out ten wallets and passed in front of the Sultan's daughter; but she didn’t even bat an eyelid, let alone smile. The vizier's son returned to the door of her room again, counted out ten more wallets, but this time he was unsuccessful. He appeared for the third time to the Sultan’s daughter. She saw him and said:
- Eh, boy, boy! And don’t you feel sorry for throwing that kind of money down the drain?
- Not at all! - he objected. - The late father left me a wonderful wallet - money cannot be transferred in it.
- Where is that wallet?
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru