Doctor Pascal

"There's something of everything there, t the best and the worst, the vul­gar and the sublime, flowers, muck, tears, laughter, the river of life itself..."
Pascal Rougon has served as a doctor in the rural French town of Plassans for thirty years. He lives a quiet life with his faithful servant Martine and young niece Clotilde. Pascal is a man of science, stri­ving to find the ultimate cure for all diseases. This puts him at odds with his niece, who is horrified by his denial of religious faith. Clo­tilde also distrusts Pascal's lifelong ambition to create a family tree on scientific principles, based upon his theories of heredity. Ten­sions in the household are fueled by Pascal's scheming mother, Féli­cité, as the final episode in the great Rougon-Macquart saga plays out.
Doctor Pascal is the passionate conclusion to Zola's twenty-novel sequence, and the most eloquent expression of the ideas on heredity and human progress that have underpinned it. Human relations are at its he­art, as Pascal and Clotilde are bound ever closer by ties of family and love.