Tine's fiancé and his posh mother Madam Flour arrive. The conversation -in fake French and common Antwerp dialect- reveals the father is no diamond trader but an engineer, and the boy's name is really Jules, only the liberating Yankees kept calling him Joe till it stuck. Slisse boasts he's king of his castle, but follows wife Melanie's orders and breaks his heart by breaking buddy Cesar's heart: Slisse must tell him to go without returning. In bed he tells Melanie that Cesar saved his life foolishly in the First World War trenches. As she mistakes his gloom for physical sickness, Dr. Monchausson is called. He agrees milk is poison for a grown man, refuses to examine him and leaves after eagerly copying an ancestral recipe for doc's own insomnia.
—KGF Vissers