desiring to test her, thought: "How can I put her to the test? For the proverb says:
Fire chills, rogues bless, and moonlight burns
Before a wife to virtue turns.
"Now I know from popular gossip that she is unfaithful. For the saying goes:
All things that are not seen or heard
In science or the Sacred Word,
All things in interstellar space
Are known among the populace."
After these reflections, he said to his wife: "Tomorrow morning, my dear, I am going to another village, where I shall be detained several days. Please put me up a nice lunch." And her heart quivered when she heard this; she eagerly dropped everything to make delicious dishes, almost pure butter and sugar. In fact, the old saw was justified:
When lowering clouds
Shut in the day,
When streets are mired
With sticky clay,
When husband lingers
Far away,
The flirt becomes
Supremely gay.
Now at dawn the carpenter rose and left his house. When she had made sure that he was gone, with laughing countenance she spent the dragging day in trying on all her best things. Then she called on an old lover and said: "My husband has gone to
