!” His pupils knew this joke well, for he made it at the hospital whenever he had to put a heart or liver case on a milk diet. “After that, you will gradually return to your normal life. But whenever there is any coughing or choking⁠—purges, injections, bed, milk!” He listened with icy calm, and without uttering a word, to my mother’s final objections, and as he left us without having condescended to explain the reasons for this course of treatment, my parents concluded that it had no bearing on my case, and would weaken me to no purpose, and so they did not make me try it. Naturally they sought to conceal their disobedience from the Professor, and to succeed in this avoided all the houses in which he was likely to be found. Then, as my health became worse, they decided to make me follow out Cottard’s prescriptions to the letter; in three days my “rattle” and cough had ceased, I could breathe freely.