In such lamentation, his thoughts tossing to and fro, the night dragged drearily away. On the next day at the customary hour, the carpenter, wearing an elegant costume, came as usual to the weaver's house. There he found the weaver with arms and legs sprawled over the unmade bed, heard his long-drawn, burning sighs, and noticed his pallid cheeks and trickling tears. Finding him in this condition, he said: "My friend, my friend, why are you in such a state today?" But the poor weaver, though questioned repeatedly, was too embarrassed to say a word. At last the carpenter grew weary and dropped into poetry:
No friend is he whose anger
Compels a timid languor,
Nor he whom all must anxiously attend;
But when you trust another
As if he were your mother,
He is no mere acquaintance, but a friend.
Then, after examining the weaver's heart and other members with a hand skilled in detecting symptoms, he said: "Comrade, if my diagnosis is correct, your condition is not the result of fever, but of love."
Now when his friend voluntarily introduced the subject, the weaver sat up in bed and recited a stanza of poetry:
You find repose in sore disaster
By telling things to clear-eyed master,
To virtuous servant, gentle friend,
Or wife who loves you to the end.
