STORY OF THE THREE SISTERS. 120
though he had always been desirous of having children, Heaven had
never blessed him with any. He made the gardener follow him with
the child; and when he came to his own house, which was situated at
the entrance into the gardens of the palace, went into his wife’s apart-
ment. ‘ Wife,’ said he, ‘as we have no children of our own, God hath
sent us one. I recommend him to you. Provide him a nurse, and take
as much care of him as if he were our own son; for from this moment I
acknowledge him as such.’ The intendant’s wife received the child with
great joy.

The following year the queen consort was brought to bed of another
prince, on whom the unnatural sisters had no more compassion than on
his brother ; but exposed him likewise in a basket, and set him adrift
in the canal, pretending this time that the sultaness was delivered of a
cat. It was happy also for this child that the intendant of the gardens
was walking by the canal side, who had it carried to his wife, and
charged her to take as much care of it as of the former; which was as
agreeable to her inclination as it was to that of the intendant.

The Emperor of Persia was more enraged this time against the queen
than before, and she had felt the effects of his anger, if the grand
vizier’s remonstrances had not prevailed.

The next year the queen gave birth to a princess, which innocent babe
underwent the same fate as the princes her brothers ; for the two sisters
being determined not to desist from their detestable schemes till they
had seen the queen their younger sister at least cast off, turned out, and
humbled, exposed this infant also on the canal. But the princess, as
well as the two princes her brothers, was preserved from death by the
compassion and charity of the intendant of the gardens.

To this inhumanity the two sisters added a lie and deceit, as before.
They produced a piece of wood, of which they said the queen had been
delivered.

Khoonoo-shah could no longer contain himself at this third dis-
appointment. He ordered a small shed to be built near the chief
mosque, and the queen to be confined in it, so that she might be subject
to the scorn of those who passed by; which usage, as she did not deserve
it, she bore with a patient resignation that excited the admiration as
well as compassion of those who judged of things better than the vulgar.

The two princes and the princess were, in the meantime, nursed and
brought up by the intendant of the gardens and his wife with all the
tenderness of a father and mother; and as they advanced in age, they
all showed marks of superior dignity, by a certain air which could only
belong to exalted birth. All this increased the affections of the intendant
and his wife, who called the eldest prince Bahman, and the second
Perviz, both of them names of the most ancient Emperors of Persia, and
the princess Perie-zadeh, which name also had been borne by several
queens and princesses of the kingdom.?

! Parizadeh, the Parisatis of the Greeks, signifies, ‘Born of a fairy’—~
D’ Herbelot.