Seeing him yet afar, his wife came out to meet him, carrying brandy. She opened her eyes when she saw the two elephants laden with butter and meal; but knowing that he loved to be left at ease, forbore to question him that night. The next morning she made him tell her the whole story before they got up; but when she heard what little demands he had made after rendering the Khan so great a service as restoring his talisman, she exclaimed,—
“If a man would be called a man, he ought to know better how to use his opportunities.”
And with that she sat to work to write a letter in her husband’s name to the Khan.
The letter was conceived in these words:—
“During the brief moment that thy life-talisman was in my hands, I well recognized that thou hast a bodily infirmity. It was in order that I might conjure it from thee that I required at thy hands the dog and the fox. What reward the Khan is pleased to bestow, this shall be according to the mind of the Khan.”
This letter she took with her own hands to the Khan.
When the Khan had read the letter, he was pleased to think the soothsayer had undertaken to free him of a malady against which he could never have made provision himself, as he had no knowledge of its existence; so he ordered two elephant’s-loads of treasure to be given to the woman, who went back to her husband, and they had therewith enough to live in ease and plenty.
Now this Khan had had six brethren, and it happened that once they had gone out to divert themselves, and in a thick wood they saw a most beautiful maiden playing with a he-goat, whom they stood looking at till they were tired of standing, for of looking at one so beautiful they could never be weary.
At last one of them said to her,—
“Whence comest thou, beautiful maiden?”