Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/198

182 and unpleasant position, knowing of no expedient which might enable him to leave the house. In her restlessness she went to and fro, and having gone to the street-door, one of her neighbours, a woman, saw that she was in trouble, and asked her the reason of it. She told her what had happened. The other one then said, "Return into the house. I will charge myself with the safety of your lover, and I promise you that he shall come out unharmed." Then the woman re-entered her house.

Her neighbour was not long in joining her, and they together prepared the meal, and then they all sat down to eat and drink. The woman sat facing her husband, and the neighbour opposite the bed. The latter began to tell stories and anecdotes about the tricks of women; and the lover under the bed heard all that was going on.

Pursuing her tales, the neighbour told the following one: "A married woman had a lover, whom she loved tenderly, and by whom she was loved the same. One day the lover came to see her in the absence of her husband. But the latter happened to return home unexpectedly just as they were together. The woman, knowing of no better place, hid her lover under the bed, then sat down by her husband, who was taking some refreshment, and joked and played with him. Amongst other playful games, she covered her husband's eyes with a napkin, and her lover took this opportunity to come out from under the bed and escape unobserved."

The wife understood at once how to profit by this tale; taking a napkin and covering the eyes of her husband with it, she said, "Then it was by means of this ruse that the lover was helped out of his dilemma." And the lover, taking the opportunity, succeeded in making good his escape unobserved by the husband.