The first part of the act went off smoothly. One of the brothers responded to the phantom punch and stumbled off the stage onto the floor.

It's reform -- reform! You're going to 'turn over a new leaf,' and all that, and sign the pledge, and quit cigars, and go to work, and pay your debts, and gravitate back into Sunday-school, where you can make love to the preacher's daughter under the guise of religion, and desecrate the sanctity of the innermost pale of the church by confessions at Class of your 'thorough conversion'!

The dropper left the suitcase with the bomb next to the garbage can.

In La Route des Flandres, Blum's scepticism counters George's persistent, if ultimately defeated tendency to heroicise and idealise the family past.