PHYSICIAN.
I have already told you, in cleaning and keeping in order the house which we cannot rebuild.
PRINCESS.
There are, however, salutary things, and others hurtful?
PHYSICIAN.
You have guessed all the secret. Eat moderately that which you know by experience will agree with you. Nothing is good for the body but what is easily digested. What medicine will best assist digestion? Exercise. What best recruit your strength? Sleep. What will diminish incurable ills? Patience. What change a bad constitution? Nothing. In all violent maladies, we have only the recipe of Molire, "seipnare, purgare;" and, if we will, "clisterium donare." There is not a fourth. All, I have told you amounts only to keeping a house in order, to which we cannot add a peg. All art consists in adaptation.
PRINCESS.
You puff not your merchandise. You are an honest man. When I am queen, I will make you my first physician.
PHYSICIAN.
Let nature be your first physician. It is she who made all. Of those who have lived beyond a hundred years, none were of the faculty. The king of France has already buried forty of his physicians, as many chief physicians, besides physicians of the establishment, and others.