La faute de l'abbé Mouret

by Émile Zola

"La faute de l'abbé Mouret" by Émile Zola is a novel published in 1875, the fifth volume in the Rougon-Macquart series. Father Serge Mouret, a young priest in a small village, struggles between his religious vocation and awakening desires. After falling gravely ill from mystical fervor, he recovers in an abandoned estate called Le Paradou, where he lives like Adam in paradise with a young woman named Albine. Their discovery of love challenges everything Serge believed about faith, duty, and nature's power over human souls.