229
THE WATER-CARRIER AND THE GOLDSMITH’S WIFE.
There was once, in the city of Bokhara, a water-carrier, who used to carry water to the house of a goldsmith and had done thus thirty years. Now the goldsmith had a wife of exceeding beauty and elegance and withal renowned for modesty, chastity and piety. One day, the water-carrier came, as of wont, and poured the water into the cisterns. Now the woman was standing in the midst of the court; so he went up to her and taking her hand, stroked it and pressed it, then went away and left her. When her husband came home from the bazaar, she said to him, ‘I would have thee tell me what thou hast done in the bazaar, to-day, to anger God the Most High.’ Quoth he, ‘I have done nothing.’ ‘Nay,’ rejoined she, ‘but, by Allah, thou hast indeed done something to anger God; and except thou tell me the truth, I will not abide in thy house, and thou shalt not see me, nor will I see thee.’ ‘I will tell thee the truth,’ answered he. ‘As I was sitting in my shop this day, a woman came up to me and bade me make her a bracelet. Then she went away and I wrought her a bracelet of gold and laid it aside. Presently, she returned and I brought her out the bracelet. She put out her hand and I clasped the bracelet on her wrist; and I wondered at the whiteness of her hand and the beauty of her wrist and recalled what the poet says:
Bracelets, upon her wrists, of glittering virgin gold She hath, like fire ablaze on running water cold.
It is as if the wrists and bracelets thereabout Were water girt with fire, right wondrous to behold.
So I took her hand and pressed it and squeezed it.’ ‘God is Most Great!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘Why didst thou this ill thing? Know that the water-carrier, who has come to our house these thirty years, nor sawst thou ever
