Page 335 - Bulbul Hezar

have abused your majesty so easily: If you interrogate them,
they will _confess their crime. The two brothers and the sister,

whom you see before you, are your children, which were
exposed, and received by the intendant of your gardens, who
provided nurses for them, and took care of their education.
This discourse of the bird presently cleared up the sultan's
understanding. Bird, cried he, I easily believe the truth which
thou discoverest to me. The inclination and tenderness I have
always had for them tell me but too plainly they are my own

blood. Come then, my children, embrace me, and let me give
you the first marks of a fatherly tenderness. Then he rose up,
and after having kissed the two princes and the princess, and
mingling his tears with theirs, he said, I now embrace you as my
own children of the royal blood of the sultans of Persia, whose
honour and glory I am persuaded you will maintain, and not as
the children of the intendant of my gardens, to whom I have
been very much obliged for preserving your lives.
After the two princes and the princess had embraced mutually,

with an entirely new satisfaction, the sultan sat down at the
table again with them, and pressed them to eat; and when they
had done he said, My children, you know me to be your father;
to-morrow I will bring the sultaness your mother; therefore
prepare to receive her. __

335