The Court Jester Part 25

"Have you tried it?"

Without noticing the rather uncomplimentary character of this question, the stranger clutched the lower corner of his long mantle in his hand and folding his arms looked down into the river for a few minutes before he replied, "No, I have not tasted of these waters, for I need all of my wisdom. I am the most learned doctor of all the learned ones in the University of Salamanca."

"Retiring and modest of you to say so," replied the jester.

"The whole world has heard of Don Velerio de Farrapos," said that gentleman.

"Then I do not live in the world, for this is the first time I have heard that name."

"Do not lie to me," said the other, frowning, "you _have_ heard it."

"Very well, if you insist upon it," said Le Glorieux. "In order to be easy and comfortable together, we will say that my father had a black cat of that name. But do not ask me to remember it, if you please. I already have the name of one Spaniard fixed in my mind, and I am not going to have it crowded out by yours. But what have you done that makes you talked about by all the world?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I have discovered the elixir of life"]

"I have made a great discovery."

"What is it?"

"The elixir of life."

"You do not mean it?"

"The savants of the Orient," went on the Spaniard, "claimed that there are one hundred and one ways in which a man may lose his life. He may die by poison, by drowning, bad living, a stroke of lightning, or in ninety-six other ways. But if he dies before he is one hundred years old, it is the result of accident, or of his own ignorance or wilfulness. So you see it is not so very easy to die, when all is said and done."

"But you can not convince people of that; they will keep on dying," said the fool.

"But they need not, now that I have discovered the elixir of life,"

replied Don Velerio, in a deep voice.

Le Glorieux now surveyed him with a feeling of awe. Men were searching at this very time for the elixir of life, and why should it not have been discovered by this learned doctor of Salamanca?

"It is only necessary to take it once in fifty years," observed Don Velerio carelessly.

"That seems a long while between doses," responded the fool. "But while you are about it, I should think you would add something to the medicine to put flesh on your bones," he continued, looking at Don Velerio's thin legs, which, clad in black hose, looked like slender iron rods.

"Flesh," said the learned man, "is nothing."

"It certainly is not much in your case," returned the jester.

"But life, life is everything," went on Don Velerio, waving the hand which still clutched the corner of the mantle, a gesture which gave him the appearance of a large bat. "I expect to live to the age of five thousand five hundred and fifty-seven years," said he.

"I am afraid you are just a trifle ambitious," said the jester.

"The composition of my elixir is a great secret," said the Spaniard. "It is made from serpents' broth," and he raised his voice exultantly.

"It must be a great secret since you bawl it out like that." Le Glorieux had now lost all faith in the wisdom of this "learned doctor."

"He doubts me! He dares to doubt me!" cried Don Velerio, in a shrill voice, and before he had time to realize what was happening, the jester was pushed over the low bal.u.s.trade of the bridge and into the dark waters below, where he fell with a loud splash.

This piece of treachery on the part of Don Velerio would not have been a very serious matter, for the jester was a good swimmer, had not the victim of it struck an abutment of the bridge as he went down, which stunned him and prevented him from making any effort to save himself. He would have drowned had not two men in a rowboat not far away succeeded in dragging the unconscious fool into their boat.

When he returned to his senses he was in his own room, and a nun, with a kind and gentle face, was sitting beside him.

"Why do you come here to watch me sleep?" he asked, and was surprised to find that his voice was so weak.

"You must be quiet; you have been very ill," said she.

"I ill? Now that is a queer thing, a very queer thing! What made me ill?"

"Do not trouble your head about it. It is best for you to remain perfectly silent."

"I will not be quiet until you have answered my questions. If anybody ought to be interested in this affair, it seems to me I ought to be the one."

The nun reflected a moment, then she said thoughtfully, "Perhaps it might be better to tell you, after all. You fell off of the bridge into the river. You were saved by two boatmen, but you seemed to be in a stupor."

"I remember all about it now," cried the jester. "It was that old black spider of a doctor who pushed me in. Let me up and I will break every bone in his body!"

The sister put her hand to his breast and pushed him back to his pillow again, and he was astonished to find how easily this delicate woman could manage him. "You must not grow excited," she said gently.

"He came there and talked to me about his old elixir of life," said Le Glorieux. "Did it of his own accord; I never invited him; then he said I doubted him, which I did, and he pushed me over."

"Don Velerio is very sensitive about his discovery," said the nun, "but he did not intend really to harm you."

"He did a queer thing for a man who did not intend anything by it."

"Don Velerio is flighty at times, and he was sorry for what he had done.

He has sent you a vial of his elixir of life."

"Send it straight back to him and tell him, with my compliments, to take it himself and see if it will make him----"

The door opened before he had finished the sentence, and the princess entered, followed by a page who bore a torch to light the way along the corridors. She was dressed as if for a grand fete. A coronet rested on her hair, gems flashed about her throat, her arms, and her slender waist. In all her gorgeous array she knelt on the floor and took in both her own the hand of the jester.

"Little Cousin," said he.

"Oh, he is conscious!" she cried. "I am so rejoiced to know it! Now you are going to recover right away, are you not, my poor Le Glorieux?"

"The sight of you, as you look now, ought to make even the broken statue of a man pull himself together," he replied, smiling faintly.

"Oh, it is so good to hear you talk," she exclaimed, laughing, though her eyes were full of tears.

"I did not know that it was so strange a thing to hear me talk," said he.

"Why, you have not said one word for more than two weeks!" she said impulsively. "But perhaps I ought not to have told you."

"I did not think it best to tell the patient too much, your Highness,"

said the nun almost reproachfully. "He seemed so anxious to talk that I allowed him to ask some questions, but I was just about to bid him be quiet when your gracious Highness entered the room."