The Arabian Nights [586]
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.
The grand vizier and the courtiers who were present cast themselves at the emperor's feet, to beg of him to revoke the sentence. "Your majesty, I hope, will give me leave," said the grand vizier, "to represent to you, that the laws which condemn persons to death were made to punish crimes; the three extraordinary labours of the queen are not crimes; for in what can she be said to have contributed towards them? Many other women have had, and have the same every day, and are to be pitied, but not punished. Your majesty may abstain from seeing her, but let her live. The affliction in which she will spend the rest of her life, after the loss of your favour, will be a punishment sufficiently distressing."
The emperor of Persia considered with himself, and reflecting that it was unjust to condemn the queen to death for what had happened, said, "Let her live then; I will spare her life; but it shall be on this condition, that she shall desire to die more than once every day. Let a wooden shed be built for her at the gate of the principal mosque, with iron bars to the windows, and let her be put into it, in the coarsest habit; and every Mussulmaun that shall go into the mosque to prayers shall spit in her face. If any one fail, I will have him exposed to the same punishment; and that I maybe punctually obeyed, I charge you, vizier, to appoint persons to see this done."
The emperor pronounced his sentence in such a tone that the grand vizier durst not further remonstrate; and it was executed, to the great satisfaction of the two envious sisters. A shed was built, and the queen, truly worthy of compassion, was put into it, and exposed ignominiously to the contempt of the people; 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 mean time, 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 shewed marks of superior dignity, but the princess in particular, which discovered itself every day by their docility and inclinations above trifles, different from those of common children, and 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.