In a certain town there once lived a carpenter who loved his wife very much. But she was unfaithful, and his friends and relatives had appraised him of this. So one day, with the intention of finding out the truth, the carpenter said to his wife: “My darling, a royal pavilion has been commissioned in a distant village. I must go there tomorrow. I’ll have to spend a few days there. So, prepare me some suitable provisions for the journey.”

She gladly prepared the provisions exactly as she was instructed. After this was done, he gathered his tools and his provisions for the journey in the morning while it was still dark, and said to her “I am going, my dear. Lock the door.” The carpenter, however, returned without being noticed, entered his house by a back door, and hid himself under his own bed together with his apprentice,

The woman, for her part, was extremely happy, thinking: “Today I can get together with my lover without any hindrance.” She then got her go-between to summon her lover, and right in her house the two started to enjoy themselves—eating, drinking, and making merry—without any fear. Before they could engage in sex, however, she happened somehow to touch the carpenter’s knee as she was swinging her legs. She realized immediately: “This must be the carpenter without a doubt. So, what am I to do?”

Right at that moment her lover asked her for her word of honor: “Tell me, my dear. Whom do you love more—me or your husband?” The quick-witted woman that she was, she replied: “What a stupid question! Women, after all, have loose morals and do all sorts of reckless things. Why say more—if they didn’t have noses, they would doubtless even eat shit. That’s the long and the short of it. But if I were to hear that even the slightest harm had come to my husband, I would end my life then and there.“

Deceived by the disingenuous words of that lecherous woman, the carpenter said to his apprentice: “Long live my darling wife! Long live my devoted wife! I will praise her before all the people!” So saying, he lifted the bed on his head while his wife and her lover were still lying on it and ran along the main and side streets. And the people laughed at him.

From The Pancatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom, Translated by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 129-130.