Page:Tales from the Arabic, Vol 2.djvu/38

22 road. Thereon he had set out great store of drugs and implements of medicine and he was speaking and muttering [charms], whilst the folk flocked to him and compassed him about on every side. The weaver’s wife marvelled at the largeness of the physician’s fortune and said in herself, ‘Were my husband thus, he would have an easy life of it and that wherein we are of straitness and misery would be enlarged unto him.’

Then she returned home, troubled and careful; and when her husband saw her on this wise, he questioned her of her case and she said to him, ‘Verily, my breast is straitened by reason of thee and of the simpleness of thine intent. Straitness liketh me not and thou in thy [present] craft gainest nought; so either do thou seek out a craft other than this or pay me my due and let me go my way.’ Her husband chid her for this and admonished her; but she would not be turned from her intent and said to him, ‘Go forth and watch yonder physician how he doth and learn from him what he saith.’ Quoth he, ‘Let not thy heart be troubled: I will go every day to the physician’s assembly.’

So he fell to resorting daily to the physician and committing to memory his sayings and that which he spoke of jargon, till he had gotten a great matter by heart, and all this he studied throughly and digested it. Then he returned to his wife and said to her, ‘I have committed the physician’s sayings to memory and have learned