“We are lost! My husband is sure to catch us. He is jealous as a tiger, and more pitiless than one. In the name of the prophet, if you love your life, conceal yourself in this chest!”
The author, frightened out of his wits, seeing no other way of getting out of a terrible fix, jumped into the box, and crouched down there. The woman closed down the lid, locked it, and took the key. She ran to meet her husband, and after some caresses which put him into a good humor, she said:
“I must relate to you a very singular adventure I have just had.”
“I am listening, my gazelle,” replied the Arab, who sat down on a rug and crossed his feet after the Oriental manner.
“There arrived here to-day a kind of philosopher,” she began, “he professes to have compiled a book which describes all the wiles of which my sex is capable; and then this sham sage made love to me.”
“Well, go on!” cried the Arab.
“I listened to his avowal. He was young, ardent—and you came just in time to save my tottering virtue.”
The Arab leaped to his feet like a lion, and drew his scimitar with a shout of fury. The philosopher heard all from the depths of the chest and consigned to Hades his book, and all the men and women of Arabia Petraea.
“Fatima!” cried the husband, “if you would save your life, answer me —Where is the traitor?”
Terrified at the tempest which she had roused, Fatima threw herself at her husband’s feet, and trembling beneath the point of his sword, she pointed out the chest with a prompt though timid glance of her eye. Then she rose to her feet, as if in shame, and taking the key from her girdle presented it to the jealous Arab; but, just as he was about to open the chest, the sly creature burst into a peal of laughter. Faroun stopped with a puzzled expression, and looked at his wife in amazement.