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.'

Then she returned home, troubled and careful; and when her
husband saw her on this wise, he questioned her of her case and
she said to him, 'Verily, my breast is straitened by reason of