Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 2.djvu/292

257 leave thee thus, but I must e’en set my mark on thee, to spite yonder shameless baggage, who has kept thee from me.” Then she called out to the damsels and bade them bind my feet with cords and sit on me. They did her bidding, whilst I lay insensible, and she fetched a pan of copper and setting it on a brazier, poured into it oil of sesame, in which she fried cheese. Then she came up to me and unfastening my trousers, tied a cord round my cullions and giving it to two of her women, bade them pull at it. They did so, and I swooned away and was for excess of pain in a world other than this. Then she came with a steel scalpel and cut off my yard, so that I remained like a woman: after which she seared the wound with the boiling oil and rubbed it with a powder, and I the while unconscious. When I came to myself, the blood had ceased to flow; so she bade the damsels unbind me and gave me a cup of wine to drink. Then said she to me, “Go now to her whom thou hast married and who grudged me a single night, and the mercy of God be on thy cousin Azizeh, who discovered not her secret! Indeed she was the cause of thy preservation, for hadst thou not repeated those words to me, I had surely slain thee. Rise and go to whom thou wilt, for thou hadst nothing of mine, save what I have cut off, and now I have no part in thee, nor have I any further care or occasion for thee: so begone about thy business and bless thy cousin’s memory!” With that, she gave me a push with her foot, and I rose, hardly able to walk, and went little by little, till I came to the door of my wife’s house I found it open, so I threw myself within it and fell down in a swoon; whereupon my wife came out and lifting me up, carried me into the saloon and found that I was like unto a woman. Then I fell into a deep sleep; but when I awoke, I found myself thrown down at the gate of the garden. I rose, groaning for pain and misery, and

VOL. II.