Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/114

 and pressed and squeezed it.  Said her husband, O woman, let us crave pardon of Allah! Verily, I repent of what I did, and do thou ask forgiveness of the Lord for me.  She cried, Allah pardon me and thee, and receive us into his holy keeping. -- And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

When it was the Three hundred and Ninety-first Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the goldsmiths wife cried out, Allah pardon me and thee, and receive us into his holy keeping!  And on the next day, the water-carrier came in to the jewellers wife and, throwing himself at her feet, grovelled in the dust and besought pardon of her, saying, O my lady, acquit me of that which Satan deluded me to do; for it was he that seduced me and led me astray.  She answered, Go thy ways, the sin was not in thee, but in my husband, for that he did what he did in his shop, and Allah hath retaliated upon him in this world.  And it related that the goldsmith, when his wife told him how the water-carrier had used her, said, Tit for tat, and blow for blow!; had I done more the water-carrier had done more; -- which became a current byword among the folk. Therefore it behoveth a wife to be both outward and inward with her husband; contenting herself with little from him, if he cannot give her much, and taking pattern by Ayishah the Truthful and Fatimah the virgin mother (Allah Almighty accept of them the twain!), that she may be of the company of the righteous ancestry. [FN#127]  And I have heard the following tale of