"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 fête. 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."