and frowardness.  Then the man continued to her, “O Whore!  O Fornicatress!  O Adulteress!  How durst thou say to me, ’There is not amongst womankind my better in nobility and purity’? and this day I have beheld with my own eyes what thy chastity may be.  So do thou take thy belongings and go forth from me and be off with thyself to thine own folk.”  And so saying he divorced her with the triple divorce and thrust her forth the house.  Now when the Emir heard the aforetold tale from his neighbour, he rejoiced therein; this being a notable wile of the guiles of womankind which they are wont to work with men for “Verily great is their craft."[FN#407] And presently he dismissed the fourth lover, his neighbour, even as he had freed the other three, and never again did such trouble befal him and his wife, or from Kazi or from any other.[FN#408] And to the same purport (quoth Shahrazad), to wit, the sleights and snares of the sex, they also tell the tale of

Coelebs the droll and his wife and her
four lovers.

There lived at the Court of a certain King a man wherewith he was wont to jest and this droll was unmated.  So one day of the days the Sultan said to him, “O Man, thou art a bachelor, so suffer us to marry thee,” and said the buffoon, “No, O King of the Age; allow me to remain in single blessedness, for in womankind there is no rest and they work many a wile, and indeed I fear lest haply we fall upon one who shall be of the fornicatresses, the adulteresses.”  Quoth the King, “There is no help but that thou wed;” and quoth the Droll, “’Tis well, O King of the Age.”  Hereupon the Sultan sent to summon the Wazir and bade him betroth the man to a woman of righteous conduct and come of decent folk.  Now the Minister had with him an old nurse, and he commanded her to find a match for the Sultan’s Jester; whereupon she rose and went out from him and engaged for the man a beautiful woman.  And presently the marriage-tie was tied between these twain and he went in unto the bride and she tarried with him a while of time even half a year or may be seven months.  Now one day of the days the King’s Jester went forth his house ere the dawn-prayer had been called on some business for the Sultan, intending to return before rise of sun.  Such was the case with him; but as regards his wife, she had known when yet unmarried four men who to her were the liefest of her companions and who, during the earlier days of her wedding, had not been able to possess her.  However, on the morning when her husband fared forth from her before the call to dawn-prayers, each and every of these four favoured lovers made up their minds to visit their playmate.  Now one of them was a Pieman[FN#409] and the second was an Herbalist[FN#410], the third was a Flesher and the fourth was the Shaykh of the Pipers[FN#411].  When the Droll went forth from his wife behold, the Pieman came and rapped at the door, whereat she opened