The King said, "He who called her so called her by her true name, for she is the full moon of the full moons, afore God!"
However, the negro wanted to draw the woman away with him, and hit her in the face.
The King, mad with jealousy, and with his heart full of ire, said to the Vizir, "Look what your negro is doing! By God! he shall die the death of a villain, and I shall make an example of him, and a warning to those who would imitate him!"
At that moment the King heard the lady say to the negro, "You are betraying your master the Vizir with his wife, and now you betray her, in spite of your intimacy with her and the favours she grants to you.[1] And surely she loves you passionately, and you are pursuing another woman!"
The King said to the Vizir, "Listen, and do not speak a word."
The lady then rose and returned to the place where she had been before, and began to recite:
"Oh, men! listen to what I say on the subject of women,[2]
For her thirst for coition is written between her eyes.
Do not put trust in her vows, and were she the Sultan's daughter.
Woman's malice is boundless; not even the King of kings
Would suffice to subdue it, what'er be his might.
Men, take heed and shun the love of woman!
Do not say, 'Such a one is my well beloved';
- ↑ You are betraying your master," etc., etc. By this phrase is rendered a passage in the text which runs, "You betray the salt, and you betray the wife of the Vizir." "To betray the salt" is a figurative phrase in allusion to the Oriental usage of hospitality in offering salt, and signifies "betraying the host, the master, the hand that nourishes."
- ↑ "Women's nature is represented to us by the moon."—(Rabelais, book iii., chap, xxxii.)
