Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/56

44 bade him make three pairs of iron shackles. When they were ready, he brought the smith in to his wife and said to him, ‘Put the shackles on the legs of these three damsels.’

The first that came forward was Zein el Mewasif, and when the blacksmith saw her, his reason forsook him and he bit his fingers and his wit fled forth his head and sore was his transport. So he said to the Jew, ‘What is these women’s crime?’ ‘They are my slave-girls,’ answered the other, ‘and have stolen my good and fled from me.’ ‘May God disappoint thine expectation!’ cried the smith. ‘Were this girl before the Chief Cadi, he would not reprove her, though she committed a hundred offences a day. Indeed, she hath no thief’s favour and she may not brook the laying of irons on her legs.’ And he went on to intercede with him, beseeching him not to fetter her. When she saw this, she said to her husband, ‘I conjure thee by Allah, bring me not forth before yonder strange man!’ Quoth he, ‘Why then camest thou out before Mesrour?’ And she made him no reply. Then he accepted the blacksmith’s intercession, so far as to allow him to put a light pair of shackles on her legs, for that she had a delicate body, which might not brook harshness, whilst he laid her handmaids in heavy irons, and they ceased not, all three, to wear hair-cloth day and night, till their bodies became wasted and their colour changed.

As for the blacksmith, he returned home in great con cern,concern, [sic] for that exceeding love was fallen on his heart for Zein el Mewasif; and he fell to reciting the following verses:

Blacksmith, may thy right hand wither, in that it did ill entreat Yon fair maid by clapping fetters on her ankles and her feet. Thou hast chained a lovely lady, gentle, soft and delicate: Of the wonderful’st of wonders was she fashioned and complete.