Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/195

Rh for him. This was a life-sized statue of Hermione, so wonderfully done by a very famous artist, that it looked like the living, breathing image of the dead queen. Indeed, Paulina declared the painter had done his work so well, that he had not reproduced the Hermione, of sixteen years ago, but the queen as she would have looked on the day her daughter was found.

After hearing of this wonderful piece of art, all were impatient to see it. Paulina invited all the royal party to one of her houses, a little removed from the royal palace, where she had been in the habit of spending much of her time. Here, in one of the largest apartments, they all beheld a raised platform, in front of which a curtain fell in concealing folds. Presently, to the sound of music, the curtain was withdrawn, and on a low pedestal, clad in sweeping draperies of white, stood the statue of the queen. It was indeed as Paulina had said. The face and figure was not that of the girlish queen who had sunk under the unjust anger of Leontes. It was that of a noble, dignified woman, adding to the loveliness of youth the serene and chastened beauty of ripened womanhood. All present cried out with amazement, and Leontes would have rushed forward to clasp the image in his arms, if Paulina had not restrained him. She