A merchant left his young wife at the start of a long trading voyage. She was pregnant at his departure, though he did not know it. He was gone many years — so many that the infant born after he left grew into a tall young man in his father's absence.
When the merchant finally returned home, he walked into his own house and saw his wife in the arms of a young man. She was hugging him, kissing him, laughing.
The merchant's hand went to his sword. His world collapsed in an instant. He would have killed them both on the spot — but something slowed him. Breath. Conscience. The restraint that, according to the rabbis, is what separates a man from an animal. He did not draw. He did not strike. He asked.
And in the asking he learned that the young man holding his wife was the son he had never met — the child she had been pregnant with on the day he left.
Gaster's Exempla (No. 367, 1924) preserves the tale as a moral lesson: a man should never allow himself to be carried away by passion. The teaching is hard. What looks like betrayal may be family. What looks like shame may be joy. A sword drawn too quickly cannot be sheathed, and a second of patience can preserve a lifetime. The sages put it this way in Pirkei Avot 4:1: Who is strong? He who conquers his own impulse.