Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/310

276 was of one village and the huntsman of another; and when the people of the two places heard what had passed, they took up arms and rose on one another in anger, and there befell a sore battle; nor did the sword leave to play amongst them, till there died of them much people, none knoweth their number save God the Most High. And amongst other stories of the malice of women,’ continued the Vizier, ‘I have heard tell, O King, that THE WOMAN WHO MADE HER HUSBAND SIFT DUST.

A man once gave his wife a dirhem to buy rice; so she went to the rice-seller, who gave her the rice and began to jest with her and ogle her, for she was fair and graceful, saying, “Rice is not good but with sugar, which if thou wilt have, come in with me awhile.” So she went in with him into his shop and he did his will of her and said to his slave, “Weigh her out a dirhem’s worth of sugar.” But he made the slave a privy sign, and the latter, taking the napkin, in which was the rice, emptied it out and put in its place earth, and for the sugar stones, after which he knotted the napkin up again and left it by her. Now the man’s object, in doing this, was that she should come to him a second time; so, when she went forth of the shop, he gave her the napkin and she took it, thinking to have in it rice and sugar, and went her way; but when she returned home and set it before her husband, he found in it earth and stones. So, when she came back with the cooking-pot, he said to her, “Did I tell thee that I had aught to build, that thou bringest me earth and stones?” When she saw this, she knew that the rice-seller’s slave had tricked her; so she said to her husband, “O man, in my trouble of mind for what hath befallen me, I went to fetch