refore proposed to Florizel and
Perdita that they should accompany him to the Sicilian court, where he
would engage Leontes should protect them, till, through his mediation,
they could obtain pardon from Polixenes, and his consent to their
marriage.

To this proposal they joyfully agreed; and Camillo, who conducted
everything relative to their flight, allowed the old shepherd to go
along with them.

The shepherd took with him the remainder of Perdita's jewels, her baby
clothes, and the paper which he had found pinned to her mantle.

After a prosperous voyage, Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the old
shepherd, arrived in safety at the court of Leontes. Leontes, who still
mourned his dead Hermione and his lost child, received Camillo with
great kindness, and gave a cordial welcome to Prince Florizel. But
Perdita, whom Florizel introduced as his princess, seemed to engross all
Leontes' attention: perceiving a resemblance between her and his dead
queen Hermione, his grief broke out afresh, and he said, such a lovely
creature might his own daughter have been, if he had not so cruelly
destroyed her. "And then, too," said he to Florizel, "I lost the society
and friendship of your brave father, whom I now desire more than my life
once again to look upon."

When the old shepherd heard how much notice the king had taken of
Perdita, and that he had lost a daughter, who was exposed in infancy, he
fell to comparing the time when he found the little Perdita, with the
manner of its exposure, the jewels and other tokens of its high birth;
from all which it was impossible for him not to conclude that Perdita
and the king's lost daughter were the same.

Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the faithful Paulina, were present
when the old shepherd related to the king the manner in which he had
found the child, and also the circumstance of Antigonus' death, he
having seen the bear seize upon him. He showed the rich mantle in which
Paulina remembered Hermione had wrapped the child; and he produced a
jewel which she remembered Hermione had tied about Perdita's neck, and
he gave up the paper which Paulina knew to be the writing of her
husband; it could not be doubted that Perdita was Leontes' own daughter:
but oh! the noble struggles of Paulina, between sorrow for her husband's
death, and joy that the oracle was fulfilled, in the king's heir, his
long-lost daughter being found. When Leontes heard that Perdita was his
daughter, the great so