Nothing is more irritating than to hear honest writers protest about depravity when one is quite certain that they make these noises without knowing … - Émile Zola

Vice, coming from above, flowed along the gutters, spread itself out in the sheets of ornamental water, re-ascended in the fountains of the public gardens to fall again on to the roofs in a fine penetrating rain.

At that hour she desired sin, the sin which no one commits, the sin which would fill her empty life, and finally set her in that hell of which she was still afraid, just as she had been when she was a little girl.

I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of Major du Paty de Clam, how Generals Mercier, de Boisdeffre and Gonse became so ensnared in this falsehood that they would later feel compelled to impose it as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intelligence, they seem at worst to have given in to the religious bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail.