What everyone agreed was <i>not</i> very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of girl you'd ask again: she'd end… - Émile Zola

"When sometimes, behind his back, they called him a tyrant, he merely smiled and uttered this profound observation: "If some day I turn liberal, they will say I have let them down.

He would have given up everything -- education, comfort, luxurious life and his powerful position as manager -- if only just for one day he could have been the humblest of these poor devils under him and be free with his own body and be oafish enough to beat his wife and take his pleasure with the wives of his neighbors. He found himself wishing he were dying of starvation too, and that his empty belly were twisted with pains that made his brain reel, for perhaps that might deaden this relentless grief! Oh to live like a brute, possessing nothing but freedom to roam in the cornfields with the ugliest and most revolting haulage girl and possess her!

All of a sudden, in the good-natured child the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.