“You make yourself sick by dosing yourself, Edouard!”

“Why no, my dear love, one doesn’t make oneself sick by taking care of oneself; on the contrary, it prevents one from being sick.”

“You know that we have company to dinner to-day. I trust that you don’t propose to select this moment to take medicine.”

“I am not talking about medicine to-day; but listen: just now I was reading in my paper the announcement of a most valuable discovery.”

“Something to prevent potatoes from being sick?”

“Oh! I am not talking about potatoes!”

“But, my dear, they are so useful, so nourishing, so valuable, so——”

“Let me alone with your potatoes; I don’t like them. What I am talking about is an infallible remedy for the gravel.”

“But you haven’t that, monsieur!”

“No, but I might have it!