So I drank a little wine to broaden it and
to hearten myself, then I rose to obey a call of nature, but the
wine had gotten into my head and I fell against the alcove." "Thou
liest, like the whore thou art!" shrieked the Ifrit, and he looked
around the hall right and left till he caught sight of my ax and
sandals and said to her, "What be these but the belongings of some
mortal who hath been in thy society?" She answered: "I never set
eyes upon them till this moment. They must have been brought by thee
hither cleaving to thy garments." Quoth the Ifrit, "These words are
absurd, thou harlot! thou strumpet!"
Then he stripped her stark-naked and, stretching her upon the floor,
bound her hands and feet to four stakes, like one crucified, and set
about torturing and trying to make her confess. I could not bear to
stand listening to her cries and groans, so I climbed the stair on the
quake with fear, and when I reached the top I replaced the trapdoor
and covered it with earth. Then repented I of what I had done with
penitence exceeding, and thought of the lady and her beauty and
loveliness, and the tortures she was suffering at the hands of the
accursed Ifrit, after her quiet life of five-and-twenty years, and how
all that had happened to her was for cause of me.
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