Nothing could be more heart rending than this mute and motionless dispair - Émile Zola

Sir, Would you allow me, grateful as I am for the kind reception you once extended to me, to show my concern about maintaining your well-deserved prestige and to point out that your star which, until now, has shone so brightly, risks being dimmed by the most shameful and indelible of stains?

Quand Hélène revint [...] elle pensait que jamais ils ne s’étaient moins aimés que ce jour-là.

He [Maxime] was twenty, and already there was nothing left to surprise or disgust him. He had certainly dreamt of the most extreme forms of debauchery. Vice with him was not an abyss, as with certain old men, but a natural, external growth.