Le Docteur Pascal

A physician-scientist compiles an exhaustive archive of a large family to examine heredity, combining clinical observations, experiments, and documentary research. Reconstructing interlinked lives exposes recurring physical and moral traits, ambitions, illnesses, and secrets that illuminate how heredity, environment, and chance shape successive generations under the Second Empire. The narrative alternates close psychological portraits and medico-scientific analysis, tracing the tension between the quest for objective knowledge and personal attachments. It culminates in an attempt to synthesize family evidence into a coherent theory, offering a calm, methodical conclusion to a long naturalistic cycle.