There was standing near the altar of the goddess, when Pericles with his train entered the temple, the good Cerimon (now grown very aged), who had restored Thaisa, the wife of Pericles, to life; and Thaisa, now a priestess of the temple, was standing before the altar; and though the many years he had passed in sorrow for her loss had much altered Pericles, Thaisa thought she knew her husband’s features, and when he approached the altar and began to speak, she remembered his voice, and listened to his words with wonder and a joyful amazement. And these were the words that Pericles spoke before the altar: “Hail, Diana! to perform thy just commands I here confess myself the Prince of Tyre, who, frighted from my country, at Pentapolis wedded the fair Thaisa. She died at sea in childbed, but brought forth a maid-child called Marina. She at Tarsus was nursed with Dionysia, who at fourteen years thought to kill her, but her better stars brought her to Mitylene, by whose shores as I sailed her good fortunes brought this maid on board, where by her most clear remembrance she made herself known to be my daughter.” Thaisa, unable to bear the transports which his words had raised in her, cried out, “You are, you are, O royal Pericles” and fainted. “What means this woman?” said Pericles. “She dies! Gentlemen, help.” “Sir,” said Cerimon, “if you have told Diana’s altar true, this is your wife.” “Reverend gentleman, no,” said Pericles. “I threw her overboard with these very arms.” Cerimon then recounted how, early one tempestuous morning, this lady was thrown upon the Ephesian shore; how, opening the coffin, he found therein rich jewels and a paper; how, happily, he recovered her and placed her here in Diana’s temple. And now Thaisa, being restored from her swoon, said: “O my lord, are you not Pericles? Like him you speak, like him you are. Did you not name a tempest, a birth, and death?” He, astonished, said, “The voice of dead Thaisa!” “That Thaisa am I,” she replied, “supposed dead and drowned.” “O true Diana!” exclaimed Pericles, in a passion of devout astonishment. “And now,” said Thaisa, “I know you better. Such a ring as I see on your finger did the king my father give you when we with tears parted from him at Pentapolis.” “Enough, you gods!” cried Pericles. “Your present kindness makes my past miseries sport. Oh, come, Thaisa, be buried a second time within these arms.” And Marina said, “My heart leaps to be gone into my mother’s bosom.” Then did Pericles show his daughter to her mother, saying, “Look who kneels here, flesh of thy flesh, thy burthen at sea, and called Marina because she was yielded there.” “Blessed and my own!” said Thaisa. And while she hung in rapturous joy over her child Pericles knelt before the altar, saying: “Pure Diana, bless thee for thy vision. For this I will offer oblations nightly to thee.”