"
"Gossip," returned the good woman, "I have told you, and I tell you
again, that it was myself and none other who did all that you say, for
my good husband and I play thus familiarly together. And, I pray you,
be not scandalised at this, for you know that we are bound to please our
husbands."
So the worthy gossip went away, more wishful to possess such a husband
for herself than she had been to talk about the husband of her friend;
and when the upholsterer came home again his wife told him the whole
story.
"Now look you, sweetheart," replied the upholsterer, "if you were not
a woman of virtue and sound understanding we should long ago have been
separated the one from the other. But I hope that God will continue to
preserve us in our mutual love, to His own glory and our happiness."
"Amen to that, my dear," said the good woman, "and I hope that on my
part you will never find aught to blame." (3)
3 This tale is accounted by most critics and commentators
to be the best in the _Heptameron_. Dunlop thinks it may
have been borrowed from a _fabliau_ composed by some
_Trouvere_ who had travelled in the East, and points out
that it corresponds with the story of the _Shopkeeper s
Wife_ in Nakshebi's Persian Tales (_Tooti Nameh_).
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