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woman, ‘to trouble thy heart and move thine anger thus? Doth it contain a complaint of oppression or demand for the price of the stuff?’ ‘Out on thee!’ answered the princess. ‘There is none of this in it, nought but words of love and gallantry. This is all through thee: else how should this devil know me?’ ‘O my lady,’ rejoined the old woman, ‘thou sittest in thy high palace and none may win to thee, no, not even the birds of the air. God keep thee and keep thy youth from blame and reproach! Thou art a princess, the daughter of a king, and needest not reck of the barking of dogs. Blame me not that I brought thee this letter, knowing not what was in it; but it is my counsel that thou send him an answer, threatening him with death and forbidding him from this idle talk. Surely he will abstain and return not to the like of this.’ ‘I fear,’ said the princess, ‘that, if I write to him, he will conceive hopes of me.’ Quoth the old woman, ‘When he reads thy threats and menace of punishment, he will desist.’ So the princess called for inkhorn and paper and pen of brass and wrote the following verses:
O thou who feignest thee the prey of love and wakefulness And plainst of that thou dost endure for passion and distress,
Thinkst thou, deluded one, to win thy wishes of the moon? Did ever any of a moon get union and liesse?
I rede thee put away the thought of this thou seekst from thee, For that therein but peril is for thee and weariness.
If thou to this thy speech return, a grievous punishment Shall surely fall on thee from me and ruin past redress.
By Him, the Almighty God, I swear, who moulded man from clay, Him who gave fire unto the sun and lit the moon no less,
If thou offend anew, for sure, upon a cross of tree I’ll have thee crucified for all thy wealth and goodliness!
Then she folded the letter and giving it to the old woman, said, ‘Carry this to him and bid him desist from this talk.’ ‘I hear and obey,’ replied she, and taking the letter, returned, rejoicing, to her own house, where she
