The tongue (speech) departed, and having been absent for a year, it came round and said: 'How have you been able to live without me?' They replied: 'Like mute people, not speaking, but breathing with the breath, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, thinking with the mind. Thus we lived.' Then speech went back.

In plain words: Speech left the body for a year. When it came back, the others said they had lived like people who cannot talk, but still breathed, saw, heard and thought. So speech returned to its place.