"One may see very well, Karl, that you have never been at a water-cure. You see, the doctor explained it to me at length, this confounded Podagra is the chief of all diseases,--it is the mother of all mischief,--and it comes from the gout-stuff that lodges in the bones and ferments there, and the gout-stuff comes from the poison stuff that you swallow by way of nourishment, for example, Kümmel and tobacco, or the things you get from the apothecary. And if you have the gout you must be sweated in wet sheets, till all the tobacco which you have ever smoked, and all the Kümmel you have ever drank, is sweated out. So you see the poison-stuff goes away, and then the gout-stuff, and then the cursed Podagra itself." "Was it so with you?" "No." "No? why didn't you stay longer, then? I would have held out till the end." "Karl, you may talk. Nobody holds out,--no human being could. They had one man there who was sweated till he smelt so strong of tobacco that the doctor called the patients in, that their own noses might testify, and it was put down in the books; but it came out afterward that the rogue had been smoking a cigar, which is forbidden,--and Kümmel is forbidden also. But to go on with the daily life. After the Tüsche, you walk again, and by that time it is evening. You may still walk about in the twilight, if you please, and many of the gentlemen and ladies do so, or you may amuse yourself in the house, with reading. I used to read the water-books which a certain Russian has written, his name is Frank, one of the chiefs of the water-doctors. Karl, there is everything in those books, everything in brief. But it is hard for a man to understand, and, on that account, I did not get beyond the second page. That was quite enough for me, for after I had read it I was as dizzy as if I had been standing on my head half an hour. Do you think, Karl, that fresh air is fresh air? Not a bit of it! And do you think that water out of your pump is water? You are quite mistaken! You see, fresh air is composed of three parts, oxygen and nitrogen and carbonic acid gas. And the pump water is composed of two parts, oxygen and hydrogen. The entire water-cure system is founded upon fresh air and water. And you see, Karl, how wisely nature has provided; we go about in the open air, and we breathe in the black carbonic acid, and the nitrogen, for they cannot be separated, and then comes the water-cure and turns these ugly things out of doors, for the oxygen of the water unites with the carbonic acid, and the hydrogen drives out the nitrogen from the body, in the sweating process. Do you understand, Karl?" "No," said Habermann, laughing heartily, "not a word of it."