Page:Tales from the Arabic, Vol 2.djvu/43

27 hot and cold, and they exceed in eating; wherefore indigestion betideth them. On this wise I was directed and guessed that which thou hast heard.’

When Galen heard this, he ordered the weaver the amount of his wife’s dowry and bade him pay it to her and divorce her. Moreover, he forbade him from returning to the practice of physic and warned him never again to take to wife a woman of better condition than himself; and he gave him his spending-money and bade him return to his [former] craft. Nor,” added the vizier, “is this more extraordinary or rarer than the story of the two sharpers who cozened each his fellow.”

When King Shah Bekht heard this, he said in himself, “How like is this story to my present case with this vizier, who hath not his like!” Then he bade him depart to his own house and come again at eventide.