In the first place, the wife of the Kází sat down in the court of meditation and arrangement, and having for the purpose of solving this problem opened the directory of falsehood, she perused it with great diligence, scanning it from paragraph to paragraph, from the preface to the conclusion. It so happened that a carpenter who was the Kází’s neighbour had long paid attentions to the wife of the latter. He chopped the tablet of his heart with the axe of uneasiness, and scratched the board of his body with the plane of lamentation; he was in constant motion like a saw, and though all his limbs were like a grating turned into eyes, and he was sitting on the chair of expectation, he was not able to attain his object; so that the hatchet of longing and burning felled the palm-tree of his patience and equanimity, and his heart was perforated by the auger of this grief. As the wife of the Kází was aware of the sufferings of the carpenter, she called her confidential slave-girl and said to her: “O thou Violet[232] of the garden of harmony, the flower of whose body I have so long cherished in the parterre of education! I have a little business which I mean to discharge this day by the aid of thy intimacy. If thou wilt accomplish it cheerfully, I shall ransom thee with my own money, and rejoice thy heart with various gifts.” The girl replied: “Whatever my mistress orders, it is my duty to perform.” The wife of the Kází said: “Go, unobserved by any one, to the carpenter and tell him that the flame of his love has taken effect on my heart; that I am aware of his having suffered torments on account of my unkindness; and that on the day of resurrection I shall have to answer for the sufferings I have caused to him: I am quite embarrassed in this matter, and, in order to remove this awful responsibility, I am prepared now to make good my past transgressions, and to meet him if he will dig an underground passage between this house and his own, so that we may be enabled to pluck the roses of mutual love whenever we choose, and communicate freely by means of this passage.” The maid went to the carpenter, and caused by the nectar of her eloquence this message to bloom in his garden of hope. He presented the girl with a thousand dínars[233] and said: