73
for my right hire is scarce two dirhems; but of a truth my heart and soul are taken up with you and how it is that ye are alone and have no man with you and no one to divert you, although ye know that women’s sport is little worth without men, nor is an entertainment complete without four at the table, and ye have no fourth. What says the poet?
Dost thou not see that for pleasure four several things combine, Instruments four, harp, hautboy and gittern and psaltery?
And unto these, four perfumes answer and correspond, Violets, roses and myrtle and blood-red anemone.
Nor is our pleasure perfect, unless four things have we, Money and wine and gardens and mistress fair and free.
And ye are three and need a fourth, who should be a man, witty, sensible and discreet, one who can keep counsel.’ When they heard what he said, it amused them and they laughed at him and replied, ‘What have we to do with that, we who are girls and fear to entrust our secrets to those who will not keep them? For we have read, in such and such a history, what says Ibn eth Thumam:
Tell not thy secrets: keep them with all thy might. A secret revealed is a secret lost outright.
If thine own bosom cannot thy secrets hold, Why expect more reserve from another wight?
Or, as well says Abou Nuwas on the same subject:
The fool, that to men doth his secrets avow, Deserves to be marked with a brand on the brow.’
‘By your lives,’ rejoined the porter, ‘I am a man of sense and discretion, well read in books and chronicles. I make known what is fair and conceal what is foul, and as says the poet:
None keeps a secret but the man who’s trusty and discreet. A secret’s ever safely placed with honest folk and leal;
And secrets trusted unto me are in a locked-up house Whose keys are lost and on whose door is set the Cadi’s seal.
