The intendant of the gardens was extremely surprised to see in the basket a child, which, though he knew it could be but just born, had very fine features.  This officer had been married several years, but though he had always been desirous of having children, Heaven had never blessed him with any.  This accident interrupted his walk:  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 apartment.  “Wife,” said he, “as we have no children of our own, God has 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, and took particular pleasure in the care of him.  The intendant himself would not inquire too narrowly whence the child came.  He saw plainly it came not far off the queen’s apartment; but it was not his business to examine too closely into what had passed, nor to create disturbances in a place where peace was so necessary.

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 third time the queen lay in she was delivered of 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, and affirmed it to be a false birth of which the queen had been delivered.

Khoosroo Shaw could no longer contain himself, when he was informed of the new extraordinary birth.  “What!” said he; “this woman, unworthy of my bed, will fill my palace with monsters, if I let her live any longer!  No, it shall not be; she is a monster herself, and I must rid the world of her.”  He pronounced sentence of death, and ordered the grand vizier to see it executed.