Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/300

266 The husband accordingly went forth and passed the night with one of his friends, whilst, as soon as it was dark, the wife covered the parrot’s cage with a piece of leather and fell to sprinkling water on it from above. Moreover, she fanned it sharply with a fan and flashed light on it from the lantern, as it were the glancing lightning, grinding the while at the hand-mill. Thus she did, without ceasing, till daybreak; and the parrot thought that the sprinkling of the water on its cage was rain and the fanning a stormy wind and the flashing of the lantern lightning and the noise of the hand-mill thunder. When her husband returned, she bade him question the parrot; so he went up to the cage and began to talk with the bird and question it of the past night. Quoth it, “O my lord, who could see or hear aught last night?” “And why so?” asked he. “Because,” replied it, “of the much rain and wind and thunder and lightning.” “Thou liest,” said the merchant. “There was nothing of all this last night.” Quoth the bird, “I tell thee but what I saw and heard.” Then was he certified that the parrot had lied in all it had told him of his wife and would have made his peace with the latter; but she said, “By Allah, I will not be friends with thee, till thou kill this parrot that lied to thee of me.” So he rose and killed the parrot; but, a few days after, he saw the young Turk come forth of his house and knew that the parrot had spoken the truth and repented of having slain it. Then he went in at once to his wife and cut her throat and casting her into the river, vowed never to take another wife. This,’ said the Vizier, ‘I tell thee, O King, that thou mayst know how great is the craft of women and that haste begetteth repentance.’

So the King turned from putting his son to death, but, next day, the favourite came in to him and kissing the ground before him, said, ‘O King, why dost thou delay to