“Doctor Pascal” is the twentieth and final novel by Émile Zola from the Rougon-Macquart cycle, first published in June 1893. Zola’s plan was to show, across the cycle of novels, how heredity and the environment affected members of one family during the years of the Second Empire—the period of Napoleon III’s dictatorship. Pascal Rougon, a doctor and scientist, devoted his entire life to creating a theory of heredity using the example of five generations of his relatives, with all their flaws and passions, but publishing these works would be a disgrace for the family…