In Nana's presence, as in church, the same stammering accents were his, the same prayers and the same fits of despair--nay, the same paroxysms of humility peculiar to an accursed creature who is crushed down in the mire from whence he has sprung.

His fleshly desires, his spiritual needs, were confounded together and seemed to spring from the obscure depths of his being and to bear but one blossom on the tree of his existence.

He abandoned himself to the power of love and of faith, those twin levers which move the world.

And despite all the struggles of his reason this bedroom of Nana's always filled him with madness, and he would sink shuddering under the almighty dominion of sex, just as he would swoon before the vast unknown of heaven.
Then when she felt how humble he was Nana grew tyrannously triumphant.
The rage for debasing things was inborn in her.

It did not suffice her to destroy them; she must soil them too.