"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "she’s been more than an hour in there! When the priests set about cleansing her sins, the choir-boys have to form in… - Émile Zola

They have so smothered me in their middle-class refinement that I don't know how there can be any blood left in my veins. I lowered my eyes, put on a dismal, silly expression, just like them; I was just as dead-and-alive as they were.

The couple fell one atop of the other, struck down, finding consolation, at last, in death.

Essentially, Doctor Pascal's only faith was his faith in life. Life was the unique manifestation of the divine. Life was God, the great motive power, the soul of the universe. And the sole instrument of life was heredity, which made the world; so that if one could only understand it, master it and make it do one's bidding, one could remake the world at will.