Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/98



Console thy lover, fear no consequence; * He is daft with loving lowes insanity; But for the teacher fear not aught from him; * Love-pain he learned long before learnt ye.

Presently it so happened that the girls owner entered the school about the same time and, finding the tablet, read the above verses indited by the boy, the girl and the schoolmaster; and wrote under them these two couplets,

May Allah never make you parting dree * And be your censurer shamed wearily! But for the teacher neer, by Allah, eye * Of mine beheld a bigger pimp than he!

Then he sent for the Kazi and witnesses and married them on the spot. Moreover, he made them a wedding-feast and treated them with exceeding munificence; and they ceased not abiding together in joy and happiness, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies. And equally pleasant is the story of

AL-MUTALAMMIS AND HIS WIFE UMAYMAH

It is related Al-Mutalammis [FN#105] once fled from Al-Nuuman bin Munzir [FN#106] and was absent so long that folk deemed him dead. Now he had a beautiful wife, Umaymah by name, and her family urged her to marry again; but she refused, for that she loved her husband Al-Mutalammis very dearly. However, they were urgent with her, because of the multitude of her suitors, and importuned with her till at last she consented, albe reluctantly; and they espoused her to a man of her own tribe. Now on the night of the wedding, Al-Mutalammis came back and, hearing in the camp a noise of pipes and tabrets and seeing signs of a wedding festival, asked