There was once a merchant, who was a niggard and miserly in his
eating and drinking. One day, he went on a journey to a certain
town and as he walked in the market-streets, behold, he met an
old trot with two scones of bread which looked sound and fair, He
asked her, "Are these for sale?"; and she answered, "Yes!" So he
beat her down and bought them at the lowest price and took them
home to his lodging, where he ate them that day. When morning
morrowed, he returned to the same place and, finding the old
woman there with other two scones, bought these also; and thus he
ceased not during twenty-five days' space when the old wife
disappeared. He made enquiry for her, but could hear no tidings
of her, till, one day as he was walking about the high streets,
he chanced upon her: so he accosted her and, after the usual
salutation and with much praise and politeness, asked why she had
disappeared from the market and ceased to supply the two cakes of
bread? Hearing this, at first she evaded giving him a reply; but
he conjured her to tell him her case; so she said, "Hear my
excuse, O my lord, which is that I was attending upon a man who
had a corroding ulcer on his spine, and his doctor bade us knead
flour with butter into a plaster and lay it on the place of pain,
where it abode all night. In the morning, I used to take that
flour and turn it into dough and make it into two scones, which I
cooked and sold to thee or to another; but presently the man died
and I was cut off from making cakes."
[FN#168] When the merchant
heard this, he repented whenas repentance availed him naught,
saying, "Verily, we are Allah's and verily unto Him we are
returning! There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Him,
the Glorious, the Great!" --And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of
day and ceased saying her permitted say.
When it was the Five Hundred and Eighty-first Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the
old trot told the merchant the provenance of the scones, he
cried, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah,
the Glorious, the Great!" And he repeated the saying of the Most
High, "Whatever evil falleth to thee it is from thyself;"
[FN#169]
and vomited till he fell sick and repented whenas repentance
availed him naught. "Moreover, O King" (continued the second
Wazir), "I have heard tell, of the malice of women, a tale of
The Lady and her Two Lovers.
