The church at Les Artaud stood o on a hillock above the isolated village, looking out onto desolate landscape all around. It was to this harsh and near pagan place that the Abbe Serge Mouret had come as parish priest, hoping to realize his craving for solitude and his dream of an existence of Godlike purity. Then, one day, with his uncle Doctor Pascal, he goes to visit ‘the Philosopher’ at Paradou where they chance to meet the sixteen-year-old Albine. Later, when the Abbe falls ill, it is to Paradou that he is brought to recover. Unwittingly, in the enchanted garden, he falls to the temptation of Albine. But when at last he awakens from his dream-like state, he is horrified, and is left to confront his transgression. In this story, the ninth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, Zola provides a damning indictment of the celibacy of the priesthood, and takes up the issue of the law of Nature versus the law of the Church. One of Zola’s best works, it contains some of his most lyrical writing, in particular in the fine descriptions of the garden.
