ive words to put off his departure for some weeks longer. Upon
this, although Leontes had so long known the integrity and honourable
principles of his friend Polixenes, as well as the excellent
disposition of his virtuous queen, he was seized with an ungovernable
jealousy. Every attention Hermione showed to Polixenes, though by her
husband's particular desire, and merely to please him, increased the
unfortunate king's malady; and from being a loving and a true friend,
and the best and fondest of husbands, Leontes became suddenly a savage
and inhuman monster. Sending for Camillo, one of the lords of his
court, and telling him of the suspicion he entertained, he commanded
him to poison Polixenes.

Camillo was a good man; and he, well knowing that the jealousy
of Leontes had not the slightest foundation in truth, instead of
poisoning Polixenes, acquainted him with the king his master's orders,
and agreed to escape with him out of the Sicilian dominions; and
Polixenes, with the assistance of Camillo, arrived safe in his own
kingdom of Bohemia, where Camillo lived from that time in the king's
court, and became the chief friend and favourite of Polixenes.

The flight of Polixenes enraged the jealous Leontes still more; he
went to the queen's apartment, where the good lady was sitting with
her little son Mamillus, who was just beginning to tell one of his
best stories to amuse his mother, when the king entered, and taking
the child away, sent Hermione to prison.

Mamillus, though but a very young child, loved his mother tenderly;
and when he saw her so dishonoured, and found she was taken from him
to be put into a prison, he took it deeply to heart, and drooped and
pined away by slow degrees, losing his appetite and his sleep, till it
was thought his grief would kill him.

The king, when he had sent his queen to prison, commanded Cleomenes
and Dion, two Sicilian lords, to go to Delphos, there to inquire of
the oracle at the temple of Apollo, if his queen had been unfaithful
to him.

When Hermione had been a short time in prison, she was brought to bed
of a daughter; and the poor lady received much comfort from the sight
of her pretty baby, and she said to it, "My poor little prisoner, I am
as innocent as you are."

Hermione had a kind friend in the noble-spirited Paulina, who was the
wife of Antigonus, a Sicilian lord; and when the Lady Paulina heard
her royal mistress was brought to bed, she went to the prison where
H