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.
Polixenes took a part in the general joy; he forgave his friend Leontes the unjust jealousy he had conceived against him, and they once more loved each other with all the warmth of their first boyish friendship. There was no fear that Polixenes would now oppose his son’s marriage with Perdita. She was no _sheep-hook_ now, but the heiress of the crown of Sicily.
Thus have we seen the patient virtues of the long-suffering Hermione rewarded. That excellent lady lived many years with her Leontes and her Perdita, the happiest of mothers and queens.
“If you are going to keep a journal at all, begin the minute you take off your waterproof.” This bit of wisdom descended upon the quartette from the lips of the special correspondent of the Perkinsville _Gazette_, one dripping morning when we found her taking notes in the British Museum. And surely she never said a wiser thing. First impressions may not be profound or correct, or reach in any way the heart and meaning of what passes under the eye, but they are the freshest and often the only impressions worth recording. One sees more in a first day in a new city than in many subsequent days. The eyes are open then, if ever, to all little peculiarities and characteristics; the ears catch every unfamiliar tone; the perceptions are quickened into a new and vivid interest, dissipated, alas, too soon! We Americans quickly make ourselves at home. The novelty of to-day is commonplace to-morrow, and the third day’s description of an event takes only a word, where the first day’s would have received a page. And there is no haunting demon of travel quite so fiendish as the journal that must be written, and that has “got behind.” One never can quite subdue its clamor, nor does any effort at writing up the half-forgotten record satisfy its insatiate demand. All the pith and the life are gone out of the neglected recollections, and we must accept the conclusion that it is NOT safe to wait after the “water-proof” is laid aside.