Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/182

170 of Hittin, when I was a young man.’ ‘And how gottest thou her?’ asked we, and he said, ‘I had a rare adventure with her.’ Quoth we, ‘Favour us with it;’ and he answered, ‘With all my heart.

Know that I once sowed a crop of flax in these parts and pulled it and scutched it and spent five hundred dinars on it; after which I would have sold it, but could get no more than this [that I had spent] for it, and the folk said to me, “Carry it to Acre: for there thou wilt assuredly make a good profit by it.” Now Acre was then in the hands of the Franks; so I carried my flax thither and sold part of it at six months’ credit. One day, as I was selling, there came up a Frankish woman, (now it is the custom of the women of the Franks to go about the market-place [and the streets] with unveiled faces,) to buy flax of me, and I saw of her beauty what dazzled my wit. So I sold her somewhat of flax and was easy with her concerning the price; and she took it and went away. Some days after, she returned and bought more flax of me and I was yet easier with her about the price; and she repeated her visits to me, seeing that I was in love with her.

Now she was used to go in company of an old woman; so I said to the latter, “I am sore enamoured of thy mistress. Canst thou contrive to bring me to enjoy her?” Quoth she, “I will contrive this for thee; but the secret must not