STORY OF THE WEAVER WHO BECAME A
PHYSICIAN BY HIS WIFE'S COMMANDMENT.



There was once, in the land of Fars,[FN#15] a man who took to
wife a woman higher than himself in rank and nobler of lineage,
but she had no guardian to preserve her from want. It misliked
her to marry one who was beneath her; nevertheless, she married
him, because of need, and took of him a bond in writing to the
effect that he would still be under her commandment and
forbiddance and would nowise gainsay her in word or deed. Now the
man was a weaver and he bound himself in writing to pay his wife
ten thousand dirhems, [in case he should make default in the
condition aforesaid].

On this wise they abode a long while till one day the wife went
out in quest of water, whereof she had need, and espied a
physician who had spread a carpet in the Thereon he had set out
great store of drugs and implements of medicine and he was
speaking and muttering [charms], whilst the folk flocked to him
and compassed him about on every side. The weaver's wife
marvelled at the largeness of the physician's fortune[FN#16] and
said in herself, 'Were my husband thus, he would have an easy
life of it and that wherein we are of straitness and misery would
be enlarged unto him.'