interj.), bang

le pot au lait, etc. Allusion to La Fontaine’s fable, La Laitière et le Pot au lait, in which Perrette, a country girl, who is going to the town to sell her milk, builds ail sorts of castles in the air with the money she expects from her marketing, and who, in her joy, forge tting the milk-pot she carries on her head, upsets it, and thereby sees ail her chimerical hopes fall to the ground :

Perrette là-dessus saute aussi, transportée :

Le lait tombe ; adieu veau, vache, cochon, couvée.