as 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's death,
he having seen the bear seize upon him. He shewed 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 sorrow that he felt
that Hermione was not living to behold her child, made him that he
could say nothing for a long time, but "O thy mother, thy mother!"

Paulina interrupted this joyful yet distressful scene, with saying to
Leontes, that she had a statue, newly finished by that rare Italian
master, Julio Romano, which was such a perfect resemblance of the
queen, that would his majesty be pleased to go to her house and look
upon it, he would be almost ready to think it was Hermione herself.
Thither then they all went; the king anxious to see the semblance of
his Hermione, and Perdita longing to behold what the mother she never
saw did look like.

When Paulina drew back the curtain which concealed this famous statue,
so perfectly did it resemble Hermione, that all the king's sorrow was
renewed at the sight: for a long time he had no power to speak or
move.

"I like your silence, my liege," said Paulina; "it the more shews your
wonder. Is not this statue very like your queen?" At length the king
said, "O, thus she stood, even with such majesty, when I first wooed
her. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so aged as this statue looks."
Paulina replied, "So much the more the carver's excellence, who has
made the statue as Hermione would have looked had she been living now.
But let me draw the curtain, sire, lest presently you think it moves."

The king then said, "Do not draw the curtain! Would I were dead! See,
Camillo, would you not think it breathed? Her eye seems to have motion
in it." "I must draw the curtain, my liege," said Paulina. "You are