This, the fifth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart Cycle, serves effectively as a sequel to "The Conquest of Plassans". Serge Mouret, the son of Francois and Marthe, is now a priest, in the little backwater of Artauds. After he suffers a breakdown, with subsequent amnesia, however, he enters into a romance with the childlike Albine, which leads to catastrophe. - Summary by Mark Leder