that she gave birth to me one night of the nights of the winter
and despatched a hired man, who was with us, in quest of fire for
her. He was absent a little while and presently returning, took
me and slit my belly and fled. When my mother saw this,
affliction overcame her and compassion possessed her; so she
sewed up my belly and tended me till, by the ordinance of God (to
whom belong might and majesty), the wound healed up."

When her husband heard this, he said to her, 'What is thy name
and what are the names of thy father and mother?' She told him
their names and her own, whereby he knew that it was she whose
belly he had slit and said to her, 'And where are thy father and
mother?' 'They are both dead,' answered she, and he said, 'I am
that journeyman who slit thy belly.' Quoth she, 'Why didst thou
that?' And he replied, 'Because of a saying I heard from the wise
woman.' 'What was it?' asked his wife, and he said, 'She avouched
that thou wouldst play the harlot with a hundied men and that I
should after take thee to wife.' Quoth she, 'Ay, I have whored it
with a hundred men, no more and no less, and behold, thou hast
married me.' 'Moreover,' continued her husband, 'the wise woman
foresaid, also, that thou shouldst die, at the last of thy life,
of the bite of a spider. Indeed, her saying hath been verified of
the harlotry and the marriage, and I fear lest her word come true
no less in the matter of thy death.'

Then they betook themselves to a place without the city, where he
builded him a mansion of solid stone and white plaster and
stopped its inner [walls] and stuccoed them; yea, he left not
therein cranny nor crevice and set in it two serving-women to
sweep and wipe, for fear of spiders. Here he abode with his wife