The Three Hundred and Eighty-eighth Night,
Dunyazad said to her, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be
other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short
the watching of this our latter night!" She replied, "With love
and good will!" It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the
director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting
and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the guests
of the Kazi's wife fared from her before turn of sun; and, when
it was noon, behold, the Kazi entered his Harem and said, "O
hand-maiden, fetch the fringed tablecloth," when the wife arose
and set before him viands of various sorts. He asked whence they
came and she answered saying, "This is from my maternal aunt who
sent it as a present to me." The judge ate and was delighted and
abode in the Harem till set of sun. But his wife ceased not daily
to draw money from his hoard and to expend it upon entertaining
her friends and gossips, and this endured for a whole year. Now
beside her mansion dwelt a poor woman in a mean dwelling and
every day the wife would feed her and her husband and babes;
moreover she would give them all that sufficed them. The woman
was far gone with child and the other charged her saying, "As
soon as 'tis thy time to be delivered, do thou come to me for I
have a mind to play a prank upon this Kazi who feareth not Allah
and who, whenever he taketh to himself a wife, first depriveth
her of food till she is well nigh famished, then shreddeth off
her nose under false pretences and putteth her away taking all
her belongings and giving naught of dower either the precedent or
the contingent." And the poor woman replied, "To hear is to
obey." Then the wife persisted in her lavish expenditure till her
neighbour came to her already overtaken by birth-pains, and these
lasted but a little while when she was brought to bed of a boy.
Hereupon the Kazi's wife arose and prepared a savoury dish called
a Baysárah,[212] the base of which is composed of beans and
gravied mallows[213] seasoned with onions and garlic. It was
noon when her husband came in and she served up the dish; and he
being anhungered ate of it and ate greedily and at supper time he did likewise. But he was not accustomed to a Baysarah, so as soon as night came on his paunch began to swell; the wind bellowed in his bowels; his stress was such that he could not be more distressed and he roared out in his agony. Herewith his wife ran in and cried to him, "No harm shall befal thee, O my lord!" and so saying she passed her hand over his stomach and presently exclaimed "Extolled be He, O my lord; verily thou art pregnant and a babe is in thy belly."?And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased to say her permitted say. Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, "How sweet is thy story, O sister mine, and how enjoyable and delectable!" Quoth she, "And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming night an the Sovran suffer me to survive?" Now when it was the next night and that was