Meanwhile the anguish of the lady Fitnah had become unbearable. The beating she had received, which kept her silent, was only part of the injustice which prevailed against her. She alone, she had assurance, was vouchsafed clear vision of the horror of this marriage; all the rest were drugged and blinded by the creature’s spells. She had heard of Frankish women, who were barren, holding men entranced for life, thus ending families; and had no doubt at all but this was one of them. A woman of volcanic passions, always righteous, for her to look on evil was to seek to slay it.
She said, “The fiend will suck my Yûsuf’s life out and then vanish.”
Her group of flatterers replied:
“Alas, yes! She will suck him as one sucks an orange, and go her way refreshed,” giving the sad mother a distracting picture of her firstborn as an empty orange-skin flung in the gutter among other refuse.
She cried, “By Allah! she shall die!”