" Thirty-six degrees, according to Alphonso, has always proved the best natural level, a kind of magic threshold, and it had sometimes occurred to him, Alphonso, said Austerlitz, that all mankind's misfortunes were connected with its departure at some point in time from that norm, and with the slightly feverish, overheated condition in which we constantly found ourselves. "

― W.G. Sebald , Austerlitz