PAULINA.
Unless another,
As like Hermione as is her picture,
Affront his eye.

CLEOMENES.
Good madam,--

PAULINA.
I have done.
Yet, if my lord will marry,--if you will, sir,
No remedy but you will,--give me the office
To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young
As was your former; but she shall be such
As, walk'd your first queen's ghost, it should take joy
To see her in your arms.

LEONTES.
My true Paulina,
We shall not marry till thou bidd'st us.

PAULINA.
That
Shall be when your first queen's again in breath;
Never till then.

[Enter a GENTLEMAN.]

GENTLEMAN.
One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,
Son of Polixenes, with his princess,--she
The fairest I have yet beheld,--desires access
To your high presence.

LEONTES.
What with him? he comes not
Like to his father's greatness: his approach,
So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us
'Tis not a visitation fram'd, but forc'd
By need and accident. What train?

GENTLEMAN.
But few,
And those but mean.

LEONTES.
His princess, say you, with him?

GENTLEMAN.
Ay; the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
That e'er the sun shone bright on.

PAULINA.
O Hermione,
As every present time doth boast itself
Above a better gone, so must thy grave
Give way to what's seen now! Sir, you yourself
Have said and writ so,--but your writing now
Is colder than that theme,--'She had not been,
Nor was not to be equall'd'; thus your verse
Flow'd with her beauty once; 'tis shrewdly ebb'd,
To say you have seen a better.

GENTLEMAN.
Pardon, madam:
The one I have almost forgot,--your pardon;--
The other, when she has obtain'd your eye,
Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else; make proselytes
Of who she but bid follow.

PAULINA.
How! not women?

GENTLEMAN.
Women will love her that she is a woman
More worth than any man; men, that she is
The rarest of all women.

LEONTES.
Go, Cleomenes;
Yourself, assisted with your honour'd friends,
Bring them to our embracement.--

[Exeunt CLEOMENES, Lords, and Gent.]

Still