So
I took thee and there passed between us that which God fore-
ordained to us; and now I am quit of my oath. But," added she,
"if my husband return yet again to the cook-maid and lie with
her, I will restore thee to thy late place in my favours."
When (continued the scavenger) I heard these words from her lips,
what while she transfixed my heart with the arrows of her
glances, my tears streamed forth, till my eyelids were sore with
weeping, and I repeated the saying of the poet:
Vouchsafe me the kiss of thy left hand, I prithee, And know that
it's worthier far than thy right;
For 'tis but a little while since it was washing Sir reverence
away from the stead of delight.
Then she gave me other fifty dinars (making in all four hundred
dinars I had of her) and bade me depart. So I went out from her
and came hither, that I might pray God (blessed and exalted be
He!) to make her husband return to the cook-maid, so haply I
might be again admitted to her favours.' When the governor of the
pilgrims heard the man's story, he set him free and said to the
bystanders, 'God on you, pray for him, for indeed he is
excusable.'
THE MOCK KHALIF.
It is related that the Khalif Haroun er Reshid, being one night
troubled with a persistent restlessness, summoned his Vizier
Jaafer the Barmecide and said to him, 'My heart is straitened and
I have a mind to divert myself tonight by walking about the
streets of Baghdad and looking into the affairs of the folk; but
we will disguise ourselves as merchants, that none may know us.
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