The Twentieth Night of the Month.

When the evening evened, the King bade summon his Minister and he presented himself before him, whereupon he required of him the hearing of the story.  So the Wazir said, “Hearkening and obedience.  Give ear, O King, to

The Tale of the Weaver who Became a Leach by Order of his Wife.

There was once, in the land of Fars,[FN#431] a man who wedded a woman higher than himself in rank and nobler of lineage, but she had no guardian to preserve her from want.  She loathed to marry one who was beneath her; yet she wived with him because of need, and took of him a bond in writing to the effect that he would ever be under her order to bid and forbid and would never thwart her in word or in deed.  Now the man was a Weaver and he bound himself in writing to pay his wife ten thousand dirhams in case of default.  Atfer such fashion they abode a long while till one day the wife went out to fetch water, of which she had need, and saw a leach who had spread a carpet hard by the road, whereon he had set out great store of simples[FN#432] and implements of medicine and he was speaking and muttering charms, whilst the folk flocked to him from all quarters and girt him about on every side.  The Weaver’s wife marvelled at the largeness of the physician’s fortune[FN#433] and said in herself, “Were my husband thus, he would lead an easy life and that wherein we are of straitness and poverty would be widened to him.”  Then she returned home, cark-full and care-full, and when her husband saw her in this condition, he questioned her of her case and she said to him, “Verily, my breast is harrowed by reason of thee and of the very goodness of thine intent,” presently adding, “Narrow means suit me not and thou in thy present craft gainest naught; so either do thou seek out a business other than this or pay me my rightful due[FN#434] and let me wend my ways.”  Her husband chid her for this and advised her to take patience; but she would not be turned from her design and said to him, “Go forth and watch yonder physician how he doth and learn from him what he saith.”  Said he, “Let not thy heart be troubled,” and added, “I will go every day to the session of the leach.”  So he began resorting daily to the physician and committing to memory his answers and that which he spoke of jargon,[FN#435] till he had gotten a great matter by rote, and all this he learned and thoroughly digested it.  Then he returned to his wife and said to her, “I have stored up the physician’s sayings in memory and have mastered his manner of muttering and diagnoses and prescribing remedies and I wot by heart the names of the medicines[FN#436] and of all the diseases, and there abideth of thy bidding naught undone:  so what dost thou command me now to do?” Quoth she, “Leave the loom and open thyself a leach’s shop;” but quoth he, “My fellow-townsmen know me and this affair will not profit me, save in a land of strangerhood; so come, let us go out from