Taverney, who had been slowly eating with his gums, began to feel famished; he seized a plate and helped himself largely to a ragout, and then demolished a partridge, bones and all, calling out that his teeth were coming back to him. He ate, laughed, and cried for joy, for half an hour, while the others remained gazing at him in stupefied wonder; then little by little he failed again, like a lamp whose oil is burning out, and all the former signs of old age returned upon him.
“Oh!” groaned he, “once more adieu to my youth,” and he gave utterance to a deep sigh, while two tears rolled over his cheeks.
Instinctively, at this mournful spectacle of the old man first made young again, and then seeming to become yet older than before, from the contrast, the sigh was echoed all round the table.
“It is easy to explain, gentlemen,” said Cagliostro; “I gave the baron but thirty-five drops of the elixir. He became young, therefore, for only thirty-five minutes.”
“Oh more, more, count!” cried the old man eagerly.
“No, sir, for perhaps the second trial would kill you.”
Of all the guests, Madame Dubarry, who had already tested the virtue of the elixir, seemed most deeply interested while old Taverney’s youth seemed thus to renew itself; she had watched him with delight and triumph, and half fancied herself growing young again at the sight, while she could hardly refrain from endeavoring to snatch from Cagliostro the wonderful bottle; but now, seeing him resume his old age even quicker than he had lost it, “Alas!” she said sadly, “all is vanity and deception; the effects of this wonderful secret last for thirty-five minutes.”
“That is to say,” said Count Haga, “that in order to resume your youth for two years, you would have to drink a perfect river.”
Every one laughed.
“Oh!” said De Condorcet, “the calculation is simple; a mere nothing of 3,153,000 drops for one year’s youth.”