thee to meddle with gallantry?" Then one of them came and looked
in my face and laughed, and another said, "By Allah, thou
mightest have known that she lied, from the time she said she
loved thee and was enamoured of thee? What is there in thee to
love?" And a third said, "This is an old man without
understanding." And they vied with each other in making mock of
me, what while I suffered sore chagrin.

However, after awhile, one of the women took pity on me and
brought me a rag of thin stuff and cast it on me. With this I
covered my privities, and no more, and abode awhile thus. Then
said I in myself, "The husbands of these women will presently
gather together on me and I shall be disgraced." So I went out by
another door of the house, and young and old crowded about me,
running after me and saying, "A madman! A madman!" till I came to
my house and knocked at the door; whereupon out came my wife and
seeing me naked, tall, bareheaded, cried out and ran in again,
saying,"This is a madman, a Satan!" But, when she and my family
knew me, they rejoiced and said to me, "What aileth thee?" I told
them that thieves had taken my clothes and stripped me and had
been like to kill me; and when I told them that they would have
killed me, they praised God the Most High and gave me joy of my
safety. So consider the craft of this woman and this device that
she practised upon me, for all my pretensions to sleight and
quickwittedness.'

The company marvelled at this story and at the doings of women.
Then came forward a fourth officer and said, 'Verily, that which
hath betided me of strange adventures is yet more extraordinary
than this; and it was on this wise.