reat desire to
learn--the intendant, pleased with her quickness, employed the same
master to teach her also. Her emulation, vivacity, and wit made her in
a little time as proficient as her brothers. At the hours of
recreation, the princess learned to sing and to play upon all sorts of
instruments; and when the princes were learning to ride, she would not
permit them to have that advantage over her, but went through all the
exercises with them, learning to ride also, to bend the bow, and dart
the reed or javelin, and oftentimes outdid them in the race and other
contests of agility.

The intendant of the gardens was so overjoyed to find his adopted
children so well requited the expense he had been at in their
education, that he resolved to be at a still greater; for as he had
till then been content only with his lodge at the entrance to the
garden, and kept no country house, he purchased a country seat at a
short distance from the city, surrounded by a large tract of arable
land, meadows, and woods, and furnished it in the richest manner, and
added gardens, according to a plan drawn by himself, and a large park,
stocked with fallow deer, that the princes and princess might divert
themselves with hunting when they chose.

When this country seat was finished, the intendant of the gardens went
and cast himself at the emperor's feet, and after representing his
long service and the infirmities of age, which he found growing upon
him, begged permission to resign his charge and retire. The emperor
gave him leave, and asked what he should do to recompense him. "Sire,"
replied the intendant of the gardens, "I have received so many
obligations from your majesty and the late emperor your father, of
happy memory, that I desire no more than the honor of being assured of
your continued favor."

He took his leave of the emperor, and retired with the two princes and
the princess to the country retreat he had built. His wife had been
dead some years, and he himself had not lived in his new abode above
six months when he was surprised by so sudden a death that he had not
time to give them the least account of the manner in which he had
saved them from destruction.

The Princes Bahman and Perviz, and the Princess Perie-zadeh, who knew
no other father than the intendant of the emperor's gardens, regretted
and bewailed him as such, and paid all the honors in his funeral
obsequies which love and filial gratitude required of them. Satisfie