Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/193

Rh suspicions of your husband?" She answered, "Oh, before God! if it will give you pleasure, the means to contrive this are not wanting." "Hasten," said her lover, "to let me know how it may be done." She then asked him, "Your friend here, is he devoted to you, and intelligent?" He answered, "Yes." She then rose, took off her garments, and handed them to the friend, who gave her his, in which she then dressed herself; then she made the friend put on her clothes. The lover said, surprised "What are you going to do?" "Be silent," she answered, and, addressing herself to the friend, she gave him the following explanations: "Go to my house and lie down in my bed. After a third part of the night is passed, my husband will come to you and ask you for the pot into which they milk the camels. You will then take up the vase, but you must keep it in your hands until he takes it from you. This is our usual way. Then he will go and return with the pot filled with milk, and say to you, 'Here is the pot!' But you must not take it from him until he has repeated the words. Then take it out of his hands, or let him put it on the ground himself. After that, you will not see anything more of him till the morning. After the pot has been put on the ground, and my husband is gone, drink the third part of the milk, and replace the pot on the ground."

The friend went, observed all these recommendations, and when the husband returned with the pot full of milk he did not take it out of his hands until he had said twice, "Here is the pot!" Unfortunately he withdrew his hands when the husband was going to set it down, the latter thinking the pot was being held, let it go, and the vase fell upon the ground and was broken. The husband, in the belief that he was speaking to his wife,