"
So the slave came up to me and tearing a strip from his skirt,
bound my eyes with it and would have cut off my head; but all her
women, great and small, came up to her and said to her, "O our
lady, this is not the first who hath erred: indeed, he knew not
thy humour and hath done nothing deserving of death." "By Allah,"
replied she, "I must needs set my mark on him." And she bade beat
me; so they beat me on my sides, and the marks ye saw are the
scars of that beating. Then she bade them put me out, and they
carried me to a distance from the house and cast me down. I rose
and dragged myself little by little to my own house, where I sent
for a surgeon, who dressed my wounds and comforted me. As soon as
I was recovered and my pains and sickness had left me, I went to
the bath and thence betaking myself to my shop, sold all that was
therein. With the proceeds, I bought four hundred white slaves,
such as no king ever got together, and caused two hundred of them
ride out with me every day. Then I made me yonder barge, on which
I spent five thousand dinars, and styled myself Khalif and
appointed each of my servants to the charge and clad him in the
habit of some one of the Khalif's officers. Moreover, I let cry
abroad, "Whoso goeth a-pleasuring on the Tigris [by night], I
will strike off his head without mercy;" and on this wise have I
done this whole year past, during which time I have heard no news
of the lady neither happened upon any trace of her.
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