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into girdles and teach me likewise how to make them, that I may work with thee; for never in my life saw I a goodlier craft than this nor a more abounding in profit. By Allah, it is a thousand times better than the trade of a merchant!’ She laughed and said, ‘Go to thy friend the druggist and borrow other thirty dirhems of him, and to-morrow pay him the whole eighty from the price of the girdle.’
So he repaired to the druggist and said to him, ‘O uncle, lend me other thirty dirhems, and to-morrow, God willing, I will repay thee the whole fourscore.’ The old man counted him out thirty dirhems, with which he went to the market and buying meat and bread and dessert and fruit and flowers as before, carried them home to the damsel, whose name was Meryem, the girdle-maker. She rose forthright and making ready rich meats, set them before Noureddin; after which she brought wine, and they drank and plied each other with liquor. When the wine began to sport with their senses, his beauty and grace pleased her and the elegance of his manners, and she recited the following verses:
Unto a slender one, who with a goblet came With musk from out his breath perfumed, to give it zest,
Quoth I, ‘Was’t not exprest from out thy cheeks?’ But ‘Nay,’ He answered; ‘when was wine from roses yet exprest?’
And she ceased not to carouse with him and ply him with wine and require of him that he should fill to her and give her to drink of that which sweetens the spirits, and whenever he laid his hand on her, she drew back from him, out of coquetry. The wine added to her beauty and grace, and Noureddin recited these verses:
A slender one, desiring wine, unto her lover said, In an assembly, whenas he did sickness for her dread,
‘An if thou give me not to drink, I’ll banish thee my bed This night:’ wherefore he feared and filled to her the vine-juice red.
