Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/116

96 Presently, the maid came and aroused them; and when the jeweller awoke, he said to Kemerezzeman, ‘O merchant, have the mosquitoes troubled thee?’ ‘No,’ answered he, and Ubeid said, ‘Belike thou art grown used to them.’ Then they broke their fast and drank coffee, after which they went out to their affairs, and Kemerezzeman betook himself to the old woman, to whom he related what had passed, saying, ‘Hast thou any farther device to bring me to foregather with her publicly?’ ‘O my son,’ answered she, ‘my contrivance hath gone thus far, and now I am at the end of my devices.’ So he left her and returned to the khan, where towards eventide the jeweller came to him and invited him. Quoth Kemerezzeman, ‘I cannot go with thee.’ ‘Why so?’ asked the merchant. ‘I love thee and cannot brook separation from thee. I conjure thee by Allah to come with me!’ ‘If it be thy wish,’ replied Kemerezzeman, ‘to continue our intercourse and keep up the friendship betwixt thee and me, take me a house beside thine own, and if thou wilt, thou shalt pass the evening with me and I with thee; but, when the time of sleep cometh, each of us shall go to his own house and lie there.’ Quoth Ubeid, ‘I have a house adjoining mine, which is my own property: so go thou with me to-night and to-morrow I will have the house voided for thee.’

So he went with him and they supped and prayed the evening-prayer, after which the jeweller drank the cup of drugged liquor and fell asleep: but in Kemerezzeman’s cup there was no drug; so he drank it and slept not. Then came the jeweller’s wife and passed the night with him, whilst her husband lay like a dead man. When he awoke in the morning, he sent for the tenant of the adjoining house and said to him, ‘O man, void me the house, for I have need of it.’ ‘On my head and eyes,’ answered the man and voided the house to him, whereupon Kemerezzeman took up his abode therein and transported