Bartolome Esteban Murillo Inmaculada Museo del Prado painting

Bartolome Esteban Murillo Inmaculada Museo del Prado paintingBartolome Esteban Murillo Inmaculada de Soult paintingPierre-Auguste Cot La Tempete painting
reliance, probity, family : what did these add up to if not a moral code? Was it his fault that Pamela and he were childless? Were genetics his responsibility? Could it be, in this inverted age, that he was being victimized by -- the fates, he agreed with himself to call the persecuting agency -- precisely _because of_ his pursuit of "the good"? -- That nowadays such a pursuit was considered wrong-headed, even evil? -- Then how cruel these fates were, to instigate his rejection by the very world he had so determinedly courted; how desolating, to be cast from the gates of the city one believed oneself to have taken long ago! -- What mean small-mindedness was this, to cast him back into the bosom of _his people_, from whom he'd felt so distant for so long! -- Here thoughts of Zeeny Vakil welled up, and guiltily, nervously, he forced them down again.
His heart kicked him violently, and he sat up, doubled over, gasped