Abbe Mouret's Transgression

The church at Les Artaud stood 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.

Serge Mouret, the younger son of Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed Cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement. He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother-a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever followed, and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past. Dr. Pascal Rougon, his uncle, hoping to save his reason, removed him from his accustomed surroundings and left him at the Paradou, the neglected demesne of a ruined mansion-house near Les Artaud, where he was nursed by Albine, niece of the caretaker. The Abbi fell in love with Albine, and, oblivious of his vows, broke them... (J. G. Patterson)