Presently, the tailor's wife took a great piece of fish and
cramming it into the hunchback's mouth, clapped her hand over it,
saying, 'By Allah, thou must swallow it at one gulp; and I will
give thee no time to chew it.' So he bolted it; but there was a
great bone in it, which stuck in his gullet, and his hour being
come, it choked him, and he died at once. When the tailor saw
this, he exclaimed, 'There is no power and no virtue but in God!
Alas, poor wretch, that he should have come by his death at our
hands!' 'Why dost thou waste time in idle lamentation?' rejoined
his wife. 'Hast thou not heard it said......?' And she repeated
the following verses:
What ails me that I waste the time in idle grief, Until I find no
friend mishap for me to bear?
Who but a fool would sit upon an unquenched fire? To wait upon
mischance as great a folly were.
'What is to be done?' asked he; and she replied, 'Rise and take
the hunchback in thine arms and cover him with a silk handkerchief:
then go out with him, and I will go before thee: and if thou meet
any one, say, "This is my son: his mother and I are taking him
to the doctor, that he may look at him." So he rose and taking
the hunchback in his arms, carried him along the streets, preceded
by his wife, who kept saying, 'O my son, God keep thee! Where has
this smallpox attacked thee and in what part dost thou feel pain?'
So that all who saw them said, 'It is a child ill of smallpox.
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