“What is it?” says the Tzar.

“Good Russian salt,” says Ivan the Ninny.

Now in that country they had never heard of salt, and the Tzar looked at the salt, and he looked at Ivan and he laughed.

“Why, this,” says he, “is nothing but white dust, and that we can pick up for nothing.  The men of my town have no need to trade with you.  You must be a ninny.”

Ivan grew very red, for he knew what his father used to call him.  He was ashamed to say anything.  So he bowed to the ground, and went away out of the palace.

But when he was outside he thought to himself, “I wonder what sort of salt they use in these parts if they do not know good Russian salt when they see it.  I will go to the kitchen.”

So he went round to the back door of the palace, and put his head into the kitchen, and said, “I am very tired.  May I sit down here and rest a little while?”

“Come in,” says one of the cooks.  “But you must sit just there, and not put even your little finger in the way of us; for we are the Tzar’s cooks, and we are in the middle of making ready his dinner.”  And the cook put a stool in a corner out of the way, and Ivan slipped in round the door, and sat down in the corner and looked about him.  There were seven cooks at least, boiling and baking, and stewing and toasting, and roasting and frying.  And as for scullions, they were as thick as cockroaches, dozens of them, running to and fro, tumbling over each other, and helping the cooks.

Ivan the Ninny sat on his stool, with his legs tucked under him and the bag of salt on his knees.  He watched the cooks and the scullions, but he did not see them put anything in the dishes which he thought could take the place of salt.  No; the meat was without salt, the kasha was without salt, and there was no salt in the potatoes.  Ivan nearly turned sick at the thought of the tastelessness of all that food.

There came the moment when all the cooks and scullions ran out of the kitchen to fetch the silver platters on which to lay the dishes.  Ivan slipped down from his stool, and running from stove to stove, from saucepan to frying pan, he dropped a pinch of salt, just what was wanted, no more no less, in everyone of the dishes.  Then he ran back to the stool in the corner, and sat there, and watched the dishes being put on the silver platters and carried off in gold-embroidered napkins to be the dinner of the Tzar.

The Tzar sat at table and took his first spoonful of soup.

“The soup is very good to-day,” says he, and he finishes the soup to the last drop.

“I’ve never known the soup so good,” says the Tzaritza, and she finishes hers.

“This is the best soup I ever tasted,” says the Princess, and down goes hers, and she, you know, was the prettiest princess who ever had dinner in this world.

It was the same with the kasha and the same with the meat.  The Tzar and the Tzaritza and the Princess wondered why they had never had so good a dinner in all their lives before.