“I like your silence, my liege,” said Paulina, “it the more shows 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 so transported, you will persuade yourself the statue lives.” “O, sweet Paulina,” said Leontes, “make me think so twenty years together! Still methinks there is an air comes from her. What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her.” “Good my lord, forbear!” said Paulina. “The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; you will stain your own with oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?” “No, not these twenty years,” said Leontes.
Perdita, who all this time had been kneeling, and beholding in silent admiration the statue of her matchless mother, said now, “And so long could I stay here, looking upon my dear mother.”
“Either forbear this transport,” said Paulina to Leontes, “and let me draw the curtain, or prepare yourself for more amazement. I can make the statue move indeed; ay, and descend from off the pedestal, and take you by the hand. But then you will think, which I protest that I am not, that I am assisted by some wicked powers.” “What you can make her do,” said the astonished king, “I am content to look upon. What you can make her speak, I am content to hear; for it is as easy to make her speak as move.”
Paulina then ordered some slow and solemn music, which she had prepared for the purpose, to strike up; and to the amazement of all the beholders, the statue came down from off the pedestal, and threw its arms around Leontes’s neck. The statue then began to speak, praying for blessings on her husband, and on her child, the newly found Perdita.
No wonder that the statue hung upon Leontes’s neck, and blessed her husband and her child. No wonder, for the statue was Hermione herself, the real, the living queen.
Paulina had falsely reported to the king the death of Hermione, thinking that the only means to preserve her royal mistress’s life; and with the good Paulina Hermione had lived ever since, never choosing Leontes should know she was living, till she heard Perdita was found; for though she had long forgiven the injuries which Leontes had done to herself, she could not pardon his cruelty to his infant daughter.
His dead queen thus restored to life, his lost daughter found, the long-sorrowing Leontes could scarcely support the excess of his own happiness. And as if nothing should be wanting to complete this strange and unlooked-for joy, king Polixenes himself now entered the palace.
When Polixenes first missed his son and Camillo, knowing that Camillo had long wished to return to Sicily, he conjectured he should find the fugitives there; and following them with all speed, he happened to arrive just at this, the happiest moment of Leontes’s life.