"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.