d master. He now
proposed that the young people should go there and claim the protection
of Leontes. So they went, and the shepherd went with them, taking
Perdita's jewels, her baby clothes, and the paper he had found pinned to
her cloak.

Leontes received them with great kindness. He was very polite to Prince
Florizel, but all his looks were for Perdita. He saw how much she was
like the Queen Hermione, and said again and again--

"Such a sweet creature my daughter might have been, if I had not cruelly
sent her from me."

When the old shepherd heard that the King had lost a baby daughter, who
had been left upon the coast of Bohemia, he felt sure that Perdita, the
child he had reared, must be the King's daughter, and when he told
his tale and showed the jewels and the paper, the King perceived that
Perdita was indeed his long-lost child. He welcomed her with joy, and
rewarded the good shepherd.

Polixenes had hastened after his son to prevent his marriage with
Perdita, but when he found that she was the daughter of his old friend,
he was only too glad to give his consent.

Yet Leontes could not be happy. He remembered how his fair Queen,
who should have been at his side to share his joy in his daughter's
happiness, was dead through his unkindness, and he could say nothing for
a long time but--

"Oh, thy mother! thy mother!" and ask forgiveness of the King of
Bohemia, and then kiss his daughter again, and then the Prince Florizel,
and then thank the old shepherd for all his goodness.

Then Paulina, who had been high all these years in the King's favor,
because of her kindness to the dead Queen Hermione, said--"I have a
statue made in the likeness of the dead Queen, a piece many years in
doing, and performed by the rare Italian master, Giulio Romano. I keep
it in a private house apart, and there, ever since you lost your Queen,
I have gone twice or thrice a day. Will it please your Majesty to go and
see the statue?"

So Leontes and Polixenes, and Florizel and Perdita, with Camillo and
their attendants, went to Paulina's house where there was a heavy purple
curtain screening off an alcove; and Paulina, with her hand on the
curtain, said--

"She was peerless when she was alive, and I do believe that her dead
likeness excels whatever yet you have looked upon, or that the hand
of man hath done. Therefore I keep it lonely, apart. But here it
is--behold, and say, 'tis well."

And with that she drew back the curtain