Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/223

201 passed the night in the arms of my sprightly husband, with the black eyes and joined eyebrows.” When her father heard this, the light in his eyes became darkness, and he cried out at her, saying, “O wanton, what is this thou sayest? Where are thy senses?” “O my father,” rejoined she, “thou breakest my heart with thy persistence in making mock of me! Indeed, my husband, who took my maidenhead, is in the wardrobe and I am with child by him.” The Vizier rose, wondering, and entered the draught-house, where he found the hunchbacked groom with his head in the slit and his heels in the air. At this sight he was confounded and said, “This is none other than the hunchback.” So he called to him, “Hallo, hunchback!” The groom made no answer but a grunt, thinking it was the Afrit who spoke to him. But the Vizier cried out at him, saying, “Speak, or I will cut off thy head with this sword.” Then said the hunchback, “By Allah, O Chief of the Afrits, I have not lifted my head since thou didst set me here; so, God on thee, have mercy on me!” “What is this thou sayest?” quoth the Vizier. “I am no Afrit; I am the father of the bride.” “It is enough that though hast already gone nigh to make me lose my life,” replied the hunchback, “go thy ways ere he come upon thee who served me thus. Could ye find none to whom to marry me but the mistress of an Afrit and the beloved of a buffalo? May God curse him who married me to her and him who was the cause of it!” Then said the Vizier to him, “Come, get up out of this place.” “Am I mad,” answered the groom, “that I should go with thee without the Afrit’s leave? He said to me, ‘When the sun rises, get up and go thy way.’ So has the sun risen or no? for I dare not budge till then.” “Who brought thee hither?” asked the Vizier; and the hunchback replied, “I came here last night to do an occasion, when behold, a mouse came out of the water