Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/132

112 goods, so that I entered Bassora alone and there befell me there such and such things;’ and he went on to relate to him all that had befallen him from beginning to end.

When he had made an end of his story, his father said to him, ‘O my son, and after all this didst thou marry her?’ ‘No,’ answered Kemerezzeman; ‘but I have promised her marriage.’ ‘Is it thine intent to marry her?’ asked Abdurrehman; and he replied, ‘If thou bid me marry her, I will do so; otherwise, I will not marry her.’ Quoth his father, ‘If thou marry her, I am quit of thee in this world and the next, and I shall be sore incensed against thee. How canst thou marry her, seeing that she hath dealt thus with her husband? For, even as she did with him for thy sake, so will she do the like with thee for another’s sake, because she is a traitress and there is no trusting in a traitor. Wherefore, if thou disobey me, I shall be wroth with thee; but, if thou give ear to my word, I will seek thee out a girl handsomer than she, who shall be pure and virtuous, and marry thee to her, though I spend all my wealth upon her. Moreover, I will make thee a wedding without equal and will glory in thee and in her; for it is better that folk should say, “Such an one hath married such an one’s daughter,” than that they should say, “He hath taken to wife a slave-girl without birth or worth.”’ And he went on to persuade his son to give up marrying her, supporting his arguments by citing saws and proofs and stories and examples and verses and moral instances, till Kemerezzeman said, ‘Since the case is thus, it boots not that I marry her.’ Whereupon his father kissed him between the eyes, saying, ‘Thou art my true son, and as I live, O my son, I will assuredly marry thee to a girl who hath not her equal!’

Then he set the jeweller’s wife and her maid in an upper chamber, appointing a black slave-girl to carry them their meat and drink. Moreover, he said to Helimeh, ‘Ye