The three hosts
One day a king and his minister went out for a walk incognito. The king said to the minister, “I really want to give something nice to everyone who is nice to us during our walk. I will give some reward to anyone who is hospitable.”The king and the minister went up to one man and said, “We are two travellers. This is such a nice town and we would like to spend the night here. Do you think we could stay at your house as guests?”
The man insulted them, saying, “How do I know that you are not bad people?”
Then the king and the minister went up and knocked on somebody else’s door. When the man opened the door they asked, “Do you think we can spend the night here? We are travellers and now it is getting dark.”
The man said, “First tell me how many of you there are. Then I will say if I can allow you to stay.”
The king said, “You see that we are only two. We do not have much money, but if you allow us to stay with you, before we leave tomorrow morning we will give you some money.”
Then the king said, “Still it is somewhat light out, and your country is so beautiful. We will just walk around a little more and come back in an hour or so.”
So the king and minister continued walking. They approached another house and knocked on the door. The king said, “We are two travellers. It is getting dark. Could we spend the night at your house?”
The man said, “Certainly! Just tell me how many of you there are.”
The king said, “You can see that we are only two.” The king told that person also that they would come back in an hour or two. Then they went back to the palace.
The minister had taken down the address of each person to whom they had spoken, and the following day the king summoned all three persons to the palace. To the one who had insulted him the king said, “I don’t need you in my kingdom. When travellers come from a different kingdom, if you don’t give them shelter it is very bad. You could see that we were respectable people. We were not thieves.” So the king threw the man out of his kingdom.
To the second man the king gave a very large amount of money. To the third one, who immediately offered shelter and only afterwards asked how many were in their party, the king gave his crown.
He told the man, “In this kingdom we need the kind of people who offer everything without any hesitation and only then seek to determine how much is necessary. When we approached you, you didn’t ask how many were in our party. You just said, ‘Come, come!’ The other man first asked how many we had. If we had had more people, he might not have agreed to shelter us. We need more people like you.”
So the third man received the crown from the king and took it home as his most treasured possession.
