Q: What got cut from the book?
I cut so much from the story—anecdotes and photographs. The biggest reason was length. I simply couldn’t tell the reader everything. But I sure wanted to! So I’ll tell a few of those stories here.
One day in 1909, an old peasant couple arrived at the palace. Clutching a burlap sack, the old man explained to the court official that he and his wife had used all their money to travel from Siberia just to bring their “Father Tsar” a present.
Q: What kind of present?
The man showed him. Opening his sack, he whistled sharply. Instantly, a sable jumped from the bag. Scurrying up the man’s arm, it hid inside the collar of the peasant’s coat, leaving just the tip of its twitching nose visible.
The official was impressed. A tamed sable was extremely rare. He immediately telephoned the Tsar’s private apartments. Would his majest like to see the animal?
“As quickly as possible,” replied Nicholas. “The children are wild with impatience.”
Minutes later, the awestruck peasant couple was led along gleaming hallways and up carpeted stairs to the nursery. Alexandra and all the children were there. But it was Nicholas’ presence that astonished the old man. “We threw ourselves at his feet,” he recalled, “and the sable looked as if he understood it was the Tsar himself.”
Nicholas told the peasant to let the animal go. As the children squealed and chased after the sable—who clawed his way up the backside of the curtains and burrowed under the thick comforters in a frantic attempt to escape—the Tsar chatted with the couple.
Even though he ruled Serbia, he knew very little about the place. He asked the peasants all sorts of questions. “What types of homes do you live in?” “what are things like?” “How [do you] go hunting?”
Unfortunately, the old man had a hard time concentrating on the conversation. He kept glancing nervously at the excited sable and the even more excited children. “My sable,” he later admitted, “[made] too much of an upset in the palace. It [was] not used to rooms like that.”
The Tsar obviously agreed. When the couple left a few hours later, they tood along a gold watch engraved with the Imperia eagle, a jeweled brooch, and enough money to cover the cost of their long trip back to Siberia. They also took home the sable.
2 Responses
This is delightful, thank you so much for passing this story along to us. I can’t wait to get my hands on the book!
Awesome! I can’t wait to read this! I’m a public librarian and have always loved your non-fiction books. I recently discovered “The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School” and am using that in a Summer “Dessert and Discussion” program with my fourth to sixth graders! Thanks for your great works!