Having become tired of my friends in Damascus, I went into the desert of Jerusalem and associated with animals till the time when I became a prisoner of the Franks, who put me to work with infidels in digging the earth of a moat in Tarapolis, when one of the chiefs of Aleppo, with whom I had formerly been acquainted, recognized me and said: `What state is this?? I recited:

 `I fled from men to mountain and desert 
 Wishing to attend upon no one but God. 
 Imagine what my state at present is 
 When I must be satisfied in a stable of wretches. 
 The feet in chains with friends 
 Is better than to be with strangers in a garden.? 

He took pity on my state and ransomed me for ten dinars from the captivity of the Franks, taking me to Aleppo where he had a daughter and married me to her with a dowry of one hundred dinars. After some time had elapsed, she turned out to be ill-humoured, quarrelsome, disobedient, abusive in her tongue and embittering my life:

 A bad wife in a good man?s house 
 Is his hell in this world already. 
 Alas for a bad consort, alas! 
 Preserve us, O Lord from the punishment of fire. 

Once she lengthened her tongue of reproach and said: `Art thou not the man whom my father purchased from the Franks for ten dinars?? I replied: `Yes, he bought me for ten dinars and sold me into thy hands for one hundred dinars.?

 I heard that a sheep had by a great man 
 Been rescued from the jaws and the power of a wolf. 
 In the evening he stroked her throat with a knife 
 Whereon the soul of the sheep complained thus: 
 'Thou hast snatched me away from the claws of a wolf, 
 But at last I see thou art thyself a wolf.?