Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/294

268 door of a mosque open and going in, took shelter in the vestibule. Presently, he espied a light approaching and examining it, saw that it came from a pair of lanterns borne by two slaves before two merchants, an old man of comely aspect and a youth. He heard the latter say to the other, ‘O my uncle, I conjure thee by Allah, give me back my wife!’ The old man replied, ‘Did I not warn thee, many a time, when the oath of divorce was always in thy mouth, as it were thy Koran?’ Then he turned and seeing Alaeddin, as he were a piece of the moon, said to him, ‘Who art thou, O my son?’ Quoth he, ‘I am Alaeddin, son of Shemseddin, Provost of the merchants at Cairo. I besought my father for merchandise; so he packed me fifty loads of goods and gave me ten thousand dinars, wherewith I set out for Baghdad; but when I came to the Lion’s Copse, the Bedouins fell upon me and took all I had. So I entered this city, knowing not where to pass the night, and seeing this place, I took shelter here.’ ‘O my son,’ said the old man, ‘what sayst thou to a thousand dinars and a suit of clothes and a mule worth other two thousand?’ ‘To what end wilt thou give me this?’ asked Alaeddin, and the other answered, ‘This young man, whom thou seest, is the only son of my brother and I have an only daughter called Zubeideh the Lutanist, who is endowed with beauty and grace. I married her to him and he loves her, but she hates him. Now he took an oath of triple divorcement and broke it. As soon as she heard of this, she left him, and he egged on all the folk to intercede with me to restore her to him; but I told him that this could not lawfully be done but by an intermediate marriage, and we have agreed to make some stranger the intermediary,