Bob Peck credited as playing...
Soldier
- Soldier: I've come too late.
- Tzar's Wife: You've saved beggers and thieves and cats and dogs, yet you won't save your master?
- Soldier: If Death needs a new friend, I cannot fight him.
- Innkeeper: These are devlish devils, and gamblers too.
- Soldier: I think I'll take a closer look.
- [leaves]
- Innkeeper: But that's folly!
- The Storyteller: [narrating] Folly or not, the soldier goes, sack on his shoulder, whistle on his lips, into the palace.
- The Storyteller: [the Soldier enters the empty palace, whistling] And inside it's very quiet. As if the walls were holding their breath... and waiting.
- Soldier's Wife: Oh what shall we do? My lips are sore with praying and my knees are weary of kneeling.
- Soldier: I have lost my whistle from worrying. It's the very devil, I say, the very devil.
- Soldier: [the devil's foot in the window begins to shake] Now where the devil's that devil of mine?
- Devil: [the devil appears in a puff of smoke] I'm here, your excellency.
- Soldier: Where have you sprung from?
- Devil: Not so much sprung as hopped, sir. You have my foot.
- Soldier: Cure my son and you can have it back. This is my good wife, by the way, and this is my devil.
- Devil: Hmm, how do you do?
- Soldier: I won't go unless you give me a map to Heaven and a way in.
- [a small hatch in the door opens and a rolled-up map is thrown out]
- Soldier: [raises voice] And two-hundred souls you have no further use for!
- [grumbling noises from behind the door]
- Devil: [sticks his head out of hatch] One-hundred-and-fifty!
- Soldier: [raises the sack above his head] Do you know what this is?
- Devil: Don't wave that sack around. All right, two-hundred. Yech!