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that she relented not to him, but only redoubled in anger against him, and that he would never win to her, and bethought himself to write her an answer, invoking [God’s help] against her. So he called for pen and ink and wrote the following verses:
O Lord, by the Five Elders, deliver me, I pray, From her whose love hath wrought me affliction and dismay.
Thou knowest what I suffer for passion’s flames and all My sickness for a maiden who saith me ever nay.
She hath on that no pity wherewith I smitten am: How long o’er this my weakness shall she the tyrant play?
I am for her distracted with agonies of death And find nor friend nor helper, O Lord, to be my stay.
How long, when night its pinions o’er all hath spread, shall I On wake, alas! bemoan me with heart and tongue till day?
Full fain would I forget her, but bow can I forget, When for desire my patience is wasted clean away?
Tell me, O bird of parting, is she then fenced and free From fortune’s tribulations, that shifts and changes aye?
Then he folded the letter and gave it, together with a purse of five hundred dinars, to the old woman, and she took it and carried it to the princess, who read it and casting it from her hand, said to her, ‘O wicked old woman, tell me the cause of all that hath befallen me from thee and from thy cunning and thy favouring of him, so that thou hast made me write letter after letter and ceasest not to go and come between him and me and carry messages, till thou hast brought about correspondence and connection between us. Thou sayest still, “I will ensure thee against his mischief and cut off from thee his speech;” but thou speakest thus only to the intent that I may continue to write thee letters and thou to fetch and carry between us, till thou ruin my repute. Out on thee! Ho, eunuchs, seize her!’ So they laid hands on the nurse and Heyat en Nufous commanded them to beat her, and they did so till her whole body streamed with blood and she fainted
