Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/190

170 gave her the apples; but she took no pleasure in them and let them lie by her side; for weakness and fever had increased on her and did not leave her for ten days, at the end of which time she began to mend. So I left the house and went to my shop, where I sat buying and selling. About mid-day a great ugly black slave came into the bazaar, having in his hand one of the three apples, with which he was playing; so I called to him and said, “Prithee, good slave, tell me whence thou hadst that apple, that I may get the fellow to it.” He laughed and answered, “I had it of my mistress; for I had been absent and on my return I found her lying ill, with three apples by her side: and she told me that the cuckold her husband had made a journey for them to Bassora, where he had bought them for three dinars. So I ate and drank with her and took this one from her.” When I heard this, the world grew black in my eyes, and I rose and shut my shop and went home, beside myself for excess of rage. I looked for the apples and finding but two of them, said to my wife, “Where is the third apple?” Quoth she, “I know not what is come of it.” This convinced me of the truth of the slave’s story, so I took a knife and coming behind her, without word said, got up on her breast and cut her throat; after which I hewed her in pieces and wrapping her in her veil and a piece of carpet, sewed the whole up hurriedly in the basket. Then I put the basket in the chest and locking it up, set it on my mule and threw it into the Tigris with my own hands. So, God on thee, O Commander of the Faithful, make haste to hang me, for I fear lest she sue for vengeance on me at the Day of Resurrection! For when I had thrown her into the river, unknown of any, I returned home and found my eldest boy weeping, though he knew not what I had done with his mother; and I said to him, “Why dost thou weep, my son?” He replied, “I took one of my mother’s apples and went down with it into the