. He
therefore spoke to Antipholus in words of fatherly affection, with
joyful hope that he should now be released. But to the utter
astonishment of AEgeon, his son denied all knowledge of him, as well he
might, for this Antipholus had never seen his father since they were
separated in the storm in his infancy; but while the poor old AEgeon was
in vain endeavouring to make his son acknowledge him, thinking surely
that either his griefs and the anxieties he had suffered had so
strangely altered him that his son did not know him, or else that he was
ashamed to acknowledge his father in his misery; in the midst of this
perplexity, the lady abbess and the other Antipholus and Dromio came
out, and the wondering Adriana saw two husbands and two Dromios standing
before her.

And now these riddling errors, which had so perplexed them all, were
clearly made out. When the duke saw the two Antipholuses and the two
Dromios both so exactly alike, he at once conjectured aright of these
seeming mysteries, for he remembered the story AEgeon had told him in the
morning; and he said, these men must be the two sons of AEgeon and their
twin slaves.

But now an unlooked-for joy indeed completed the history of AEgeon; and
the tale he had in the morning told in sorrow, and under sentence of
death, before the setting sun went down was brought to a happy
conclusion, for the venerable lady abbess made herself known to be the
long-lost wife of AEgeon, and the fond mother of the two Antipholuses.

When the fishermen took the eldest Antipholus and Dromio away from her,
she entered a nunnery, and by her wise and virtuous conduct, she was at
length made lady abbess of this convent, and in discharging the rites of
hospitality to an unhappy stranger she had unknowingly protected her own
son.

Joyful congratulations and affectionate greetings between these long
separated parents and their children made them for a while forget that
AEgeon was yet under sentence of death; but when they were become a
little calm, Antipholus of Ephesus offered the duke the ransom money for
his father's life; but the duke freely pardoned AEgeon, and would not
take the money. And the duke went with the abbess and her newly-found
husband and children into the convent, to hear this happy family
discourse at leisure of the blessed ending of their adverse fortunes.
And the two Dromios' humble joy must not be forgotten; they had their
congratulations and greetings too, and ea