Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/311

283 So he gave them to her, and she took them and rejoiced in them.

Then said Hassan to her, ‘Needs must thou give us a sufficient answer.’ ‘If it be indeed his wish to marry her,’ replied Delileh, ‘it availed nothing to play this trick upon us: it behoveth him rather to demand her in marriage of her uncle Captain Zureic, him who cries out, saying, “A pound of fish for two farthings!” and hangs up in his shop a purse containing two thousand dinars; for he is her guardian.’ When the forty heard this, they all rose and cried out, saying, ‘What manner of talk is this, O strumpet? Dost thou wish to bereave us of our brother Ali of Cairo?’ Then she returned to the khan and said to her daughter, ‘Ali the Egyptian seeks thee in marriage.’ Whereat Zeyneb rejoiced, for she loved him because of his forbearance towards her, and asked her mother what had passed. So she told her, adding, ‘I made it a condition that he should demand thy hand of thine uncle, so I might make him fall into destruction.’

Meanwhile Ali turned to his fellows and said to them, ‘What manner of man is this Zureic?’ ‘He was chief of the sharpers of the land of Irak,’ answered they, ‘and could all but pierce mountains and lay hold upon the stars. He would steal the very kohl from the eye and in brief, he had not his match for roguery; but he hath repented and forsworn his old way of life and opened him a fish shop. Moreover, he has amassed two thousand dinars by the sale of fish and laid them in a purse with strings of silk, to which he has tied bells and rings and rattles of brass. Every time he opens his shop, he hangs up the purse on a peg within the door and cries out, saying, “Where are ye, o sharpers of Egypt, O cutters of Irak, O tricksters of the land of the Persians? Behold, Zureic the fishmonger hath hung up a purse in front of his shop, and whoso pretendeth to sleight and cunning and can take it by craft,