, 'tis strange
He thus should steal upon us.

PAULINA.
Had our prince,--
Jewel of children,--seen this hour, he had pair'd
Well with this lord: there was not full a month
Between their births.

LEONTES.
Pr'ythee no more; cease; Thou know'st
He dies to me again when talk'd of: sure,
When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches
Will bring me to consider that which may
Unfurnish me of reason.--They are come.--

[Re-enter CLEOMENES, with FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and Attendants.]

Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;
For she did print your royal father off,
Conceiving you: were I but twenty-one,
Your father's image is so hit in you,
His very air, that I should call you brother,
As I did him, and speak of something wildly
By us perform'd before. Most dearly welcome!
And your fair princess,--goddess! O, alas!
I lost a couple that 'twixt heaven and earth
Might thus have stood, begetting wonder, as
You, gracious couple, do! And then I lost,--
All mine own folly,--the society,
Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
Though bearing misery, I desire my life
Once more to look on him.

FLORIZEL.
By his command
Have I here touch'd Sicilia, and from him
Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,
Can send his brother: and, but infirmity,--
Which waits upon worn times,--hath something seiz'd
His wish'd ability, he had himself
The lands and waters 'twixt your throne and his
Measur'd, to look upon you; whom he loves,
He bade me say so,--more than all the sceptres
And those that bear them, living.

LEONTES.
O my brother,--
Good gentleman!--the wrongs I have done thee stir
Afresh within me; and these thy offices,
So rarely kind, are as interpreters
Of my behind-hand slackness!--Welcome hither,
As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too
Expos'd this paragon to the fearful usage,--
At least ungentle,--of the dreadful Neptune,
To greet a man not worth her pains, much less
The adventure of her person?

FLORIZEL.
Good, my lord,
She came from Libya.

LEONTES.
Where the warlike Smalus,
That noble honour'd lord, is fear'd and lov'd?

FLORIZEL.
Most royal sir, from thence; from him whose daughter
His tears proclaim'd his, parting with her: thence,--
A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross'd,
To execute the charge my father gave me,
For visiting your highness: m