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a leach. So they questioned him of his case and he told them what ailed him, whereupon they blamed him and chid him for his folly, and he answered them with these verses:
I’m cursed with her,—my like was blameless aye,—and dead I’m shotten with a shaft from hand of archer sped.
A woman unto me there came, Huboub by name, Complaining of unright and Fortune’s drearihead;
And with her came a girl, who showed a face that passed The full moon’s light athwart the middle darkness spread.
Her beauties she displayed and her complaint preferred What while in floods there ran the tears her eyelids shed.
I hearkened to her speech and looked upon her face And sore she made me pine with smiling lips and red.
Then with my heart away she fared and left me here, The hostage of desire. Ah, whither hath she fled?
This then is all my case; have ruth upon my plight And take my servant here to Cadi in my stead.
Then he gave one sob and his soul departed his body; whereupon they buried him and commending him to the mercy of God, repaired to the third Cadi and the fourth, and there befell them the like of what befell their brethren. Moreover, they found the assessors also sick for love of her, and indeed all who saw her died of her love, or, if they died not, lived, Night dccclxi.afflicted with the agonies of passion [in vain], may God have mercy on them all!
Meanwhile Zein el Mewasif and her women fared on with all diligence till they came to a convent by the way, in which dwelt a prior called Danis and forty monks. When the prior saw her beauty, he went out to her and invited her to alight, saying, ‘Rest with us ten days and after go your ways.’ So she and her damsels alighted and entered the convent; and when Danis saw her beauty and grace, she debauched his faith and he was seduced by her; wherefore he fell to sending her love-messages by
