"Oh, pretty well, thank you. I can live along for a while on what my father saved. When that's gone, I don't know what I'll do."
"Tut! Tut!" said Death. "That's no way to talk. If you only knew it, I'm your godmother who held you at your christening. I helped your father to wealth and fame and now I'll help you. I tell you what I'll do: I'll apprentice you to a successful doctor and I'll see to it that soon you'll know more than he knows."
Death rubbed some salve over Josef's ears and led him to a doctor.
"I wish you to take this youth as an apprentice," she said. "He's a likely lad and will do you credit. Teach him all you know."
The doctor accepted Josef as an apprentice and when he went out into the fields to gather herbs and simples, he took the youth with him.
Now the magic salve with which Godmother Death had anointed Josef enabled him to hear and understand the whisperings of the herbs. Each one as he picked it, whispered to him its secret properties.
"I cure a fever," one whispered.
"And I a rash."
"And I a boil."
The doctor was amazed at his apprentice's knowledge of herbs.