Meanwhile her friends returned from the Nile festival,
and they came to visit her and inquire after her health.
They found her looking wretchedly ill, on account of the
excitement she had passed through and the anxiety she was
in. She confessed to the women what had happened with
Joseph, and they advised her to accuse him of immorality
before her husband, and then he would be thrown into
prison. Zuleika accepted their advice, and she begged her
visitors to support her charges by also lodging complaints
against Joseph, that he had been annoying them with improper
proposals.[129]

But Zuleika did not depend entirely upon the assistance of
her friends. She planned a ruse, besides, to be sure of
convincing her husband of Joseph's guilt. She laid aside her
rich robes of state, put on her ordinary clothes, and took to
her sick-bed, in which she had been lying when the people
left to go to the festival. Also she took Joseph's torn garment,
and laid it out next to her. Then she sent a little boy
to summon some of the men of her house, and to them she
told the tale of Joseph's alleged outrage, saying: "See the
Hebrew slave, whom your master hath brought in unto my
house, and who attempted to do violence to me to-day! You
had scarcely gone away to the festival when be entered the
house, and making sure that no one was here he tried to
force me to yield to his lustful desire. But I grasped his
clothes, tore them, and cried with a loud voice. When he
heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, he was seized with
fear, and be fled, and got him out, but he left his garment