The Empty Drum by Leo Tolstoy. Short summary

5 seconds

The king wanted to take Yemelyan’s wife away, and he gave him tasks that were harder than the others. But he did everything with the help of his wife. Yemelyan got a magic drum, and the army went after him. The tsar gave up on the plan.

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Yemelyan the worker took pity on the frog. She turned into a maiden and asked to marry him. They began to live together.

The Tsar saw the beautiful girl and wanted to possess her. He called his advisors. He asked how to get hold of the woman, so that it would be in accordance with the law.

The advisors said: hire Yemelyan as a worker, torture him to death, and marry the widow. The Tsar liked the idea. But whatever the Tsar ordered, Yemelyan did everything on schedule with the help of his wife, the sorceress. Then the ministers advised the Tsar to send an employee «to bring something, I do not know where, to bring something, I do not know what.

The wife told him to go to her grandmother for advice. She gave him a ball, which led him to a town by the sea. His grandmother told him to take an object that was obeyed more than his father’s mother. Emelyan saw that his son did not listen to his parents, who woke him up, but jumped up vividly at the sound of the drum.

Emelyan brought the drum to the Tsar. He said he had brought the wrong thing. Yemelyan beat the drum, and immediately the whole army stood up for him. The tsar got scared and gave up the idea of making an employee’s wife a widow.