I opened
it and found these words written therein: "Know, O my cousin,
that I acquit thee of my blood and I beseech God to make accord
between thee and her whom thou lovest: but if aught befall thee
through the daughter of Delileh the crafty, return thou not to
her neither resort to any other woman and bear thine affliction
patiently, for were not the ordained term of thy life a long one,
thou hadst perished long ago: but praised be God, who hath
appointed my last day before thine! My peace be upon thee;
preserve the cloth with the gazelles figured thereon and let it
not leave thee, for it used to keep me company, whenas thou wert
absent from me; but I conjure thee, by Allah, if thou chance to
fall in with her who wrought these gazelles and it be in thy
power to foregather with her, hold aloof from her and do not let
her approach thee nor marry her; and if thou happen not on her
and find no way to her, look thou company not with any other of
her sex. Know that she who wrought these gazelles is the daughter
of the King of the Camphor Islands and every year she works a
like cloth and despatches it to far countries, that her report
and the beauty of her broidery, which none in the world can
match, may be bruited abroad, As for thy beloved, the daughter of
Delileh, this cloth came to her hand, and she used to ensnare
folk with it, showing it to them and saying, 'I have a sister who
wrought this.
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