How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Look at François," Thérèse said to Laurent, "You'd think he understood and that he was going to tell Camille everything this evening. Why, wouldn't it be odd if he were to start speaking in the shop one of these days? He could tell some fine stories about us." (40)
At the beginning of their adulterous affair, Thérèse jokes about how François knows all of her and Laurent's secrets. But this moment foreshadows the sinister scenes after Camille's death, when Laurent begins to suspect that the cat will reveal their crime.
Quote #2
Until then, the drowned man had not troubled Laurent's sleep. But now the thought of Thérèse brought with it the spectre of her husband. The murderer did not dare reopen his eyes: he was afraid of seeing his victim in the corner of the room. At one point, he thought his bed was shaking in some odd way; he imagined Camille hiding under it and shaking it like that, so that Laurent would fall out and he could bite him. (90)
Even though Zola insists that Laurent doesn't feel remorse, Laurent begins to have hallucinations about Camille's ghost after he murders the guy. What else could possibly cause these hallucinations, if not guilt?
Quote #3
Thérèse, too had been visited by the ghost of Camille in that night of fever. [...] Struggling in the throes of insomnia, she saw the drowned man rise up in front of her. Like Laurent, she had twisted around in a frenzy of desire and horror. (18.1)
When Thérèse also begins to have nightly visions of Camille's ghost, Zola's "scientific novel" starts sounding more and more like a horror story.
Quote #4
Every night, the drowned man came to them, and turned them over and over with iron pincers. Every evening, the state of nervous agony in which they lived drove up the fever of their blood, raising frightful spectres before them. [...] [Thérèse] experienced strong waves of terror at the idea of locking herself up until morning in that great room which was filled with strange glimmerings and people by ghosts. (18.7)
The married couple is constantly visited by Camille's ghost, and the language here sounds extra creepy and supernatural. Ain't nothing scientific about it. Unless you're one of those people who really enjoys watching supernatural reality TV shows, like Ghost Hunters.
Quote #5
It was like some grotesque barrier between them. They were seized by feverish delirium and the barrier would become an actual one for them; they would touch the body, they would see it lying like a greenish, rotten lump of meat [...]. All their senses shared in this hallucination. (22.12)
The image of Camille's rotting head brings us back to the first time Laurent sees Camille's corpse at the morgue. Also, the fact that Thérèse and Laurent share the same hallucination suggests that the murder has linked them together irrevocably… or they both just feel really, really guilty about the whole thing. Duh.
Quote #6
Suddenly, Laurent thought he experienced a hallucination. As he was turning to go from the window back to the bed, he saw Camille [...]. His victim's face was greenish in colour and convulsed, as it had been on the slab in the Morgue. [...]
"There!" Laurent said in a terrified voice. "There!" [...]
"It's his portrait," [Thérèse] muttered, in a whisper, as though the painted face of the husband could hear what she was saying. (21.39)
If we go back to the first description of Camille's portrait in Chapter 6, the narrator tells us that his face looks like "the greenish mask of a drowned man" (6.20)… which is totally a great example of foreshadowing, you know? Lit nerds, get excited.
Quote #7
The portrait was watching him, following him with its eyes. From time to time, he could not resist taking a look towards it, and then, in the depths of the shadow, he would still see the dead, flat stare of the drowned man. The thought that Camille was there [...], keeping an eye on him, [...] made Laurent completely mad with terror and despair. (21.55)
The image of Camille's eyes following Laurent reminds us of when Laurent imagines that François the cat is watching him. Zola claims that Laurent isn't suffering from a guilty conscience, but he sure seems to be exhibiting textbook signs of guilt.
Quote #8
So he would no longer dare to work, for he would always be afraid of bringing his victim back to life with the slightest stroke of the brush. [...] The idea that his fingers had this unavoidable and unconscious ability to reproduce constantly the face of Camille, made him look with terror at his hand. It seemed to him that the hand no longer belonged to him. (25.38)
Laurent is horrified by the fact that he's unable to draw anything but Camille's face. The "unconscious," almost supernatural ability of his hands to move without his controlling them is also another example of how Zola believes people have no free will.
Quote #9
His worst suffering, one that was both mental and physical, came from the bite that Camille had inflicted on his neck. There were times when he imagined that this scar covered his whole body. [...] He could not stand in front of the mirror without seeing the phenomenon that he had so often noticed, one that never failed to terrify him: the motion that he felt would have the effect of bringing blood up to his neck, making the scar purple and causing it to eat into his flesh. (30.18)
Laurent's hallucination that his scar is eating away at his flesh is yet another example of the kind of wacky, supernatural phenomena that are at odds with Zola's stated scientific goals. Make up your mind, Mr. Zola—is this book a scientific study of human nature, or just a novel?
Quote #10
He had a particular loathing of François, the tabby cat. [...] The cat would look at him with large, round eyes, staring diabolically. It was these eyes, constantly settled on him, that drove the young man mad. [...] He told himself that the cat, like Mme Raquin, knew about the crime and would denounce him some day if he were ever to speak. (30.20)
Laurent's hallucination that François can talk is reminiscent of an earlier scene in the novel, when Thérèse jokes about how François knows of their secret affair. When Laurent kills François to prevent him from revealing the crime—he's totally nuts by this point, in case you can't tell—it's difficult not to read this as a sign of Laurent's feelings about killing Camille. But Zola wants us to suspend our moral judgment. (As if.)