Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/270

236 speckled snake, the more that she had beyond measure evil entreated him aforetime; and as saith the adage, ‘Ill-usage rooteth up desire and soweth hatred in the soil of hearts;’ and gifted of God is he who saith:

And indeed he had not given her shelter by reason of any praiseworthy quality in her, but he dealt with her thus generously only of desire for the approval of God the Most High; wherefore he occupied not himself with her by way of marriage. When she saw that he held aloof from her bed and occupied himself with others, she hated him and jealousy gat the mastery of her and Satan prompted her to take the ring from him and kill him and make herself queen in his stead. So she went forth one night from her pavilion, intending for that in which was her husband the king; and it chanced, by the ordinance of fate and written destiny, that Marouf lay that night with one of his favourites, a damsel endowed with beauty and grace and symmetry.

Now it was his wont, of the excellence of his piety, that, when he was minded to have to do with a woman, he would put off the enchanted ring from his finger, in reverence to the holy names engraved thereon, and lay it on the pillow, nor would he don it again till he had purified himself [according to the law]. Moreover, when he had lain with a woman, he was used to bid her go forth from him [before daybreak], of his fear for the ring; and when he went forth to the bath, he locked the door of the pavilion till his return, when he put on the ring, and after this, all were free to enter as of wont. Fatimeh knew of all this and went not forth from her