Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/282

254 asleep under the window,’ replied Delileh; whereupon the lady looked out and seeing the barber clad in a Levantine habit and the young merchant as he were a drunken white slave and the Jew and the dyer and the ass-driver as they were shaven white slaves, said in herself, ‘Each of these is worth more than a thousand dinars.’ So she opened a chest and gave the old woman the thousand dinars, saying, ‘Come back anon and when my husband wakes, I will get thee the other two hundred from him.’ ‘O my lady,’ answered the old woman, ‘a hundred of them are thine, under the sherbet-gugglet whereof thou drinkest, and the other hundred do thou keep for me till I come back. Now let me out by the private door.’ So she let her out, and [God] the Protector protected her and she made her way home to her daughter, to whom she related all that had passed, saying, ‘The one that troubles me most is the ass-driver, for he knows me.’ ‘O my mother,’ said Zeyneb, ‘abide quiet [awhile] and let what thou hast done suffice thee, for not always comes the pitcher off unbroken.’

When the Chief of the police awoke, his wife said to him, ‘I give thee joy of the five slaves thou hast bought of the old woman.’ ‘What slaves?’ asked he. ‘Why dost thou mock me?’ answered she. ‘God willing, they shall become people of condition like unto thee.’ ‘As my head liveth,’ rejoined he, ‘I have bought no slaves! Who saith this?’ ‘The old woman, the brokeress,’ replied she, ‘from whom thou boughtest them; and thou didst promise her a thousand dinars for them and two hundred for herself.’ Quoth he, ‘Didst thou give her the money?’ ‘Yes,’ answered she; ‘for I saw the slaves with my own eyes, and on each is a suit of clothes worth a thousand dinars; so I sent out to bid the sergeants have an eye to them.’

So he went out and said to the officers, ‘Where are the