"The Downfall (La Débâcle)" is Émile Zola's 1892 novel, the penultimate in the Rougon-Macquart series, which is a story set against the background of the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Sedan and the Paris Commune, events that led to the end of the reign of Napoléon III and the Second French Empire in 1870. The novel follows Jean Macquart, a corporal in the French army corps, as they are driven back by the Prussians deeper and deeper into France....

Emma dreams of sophistication, wealth, and romance, but what she gets is a marriage to Charles Bovary, a provincial, middle-class doctor who is a devoted but boring husband. She tries her hardest to be a loyal and loving wife, even as she grows to resent him more and more for his insufferable dullness. Soon, though, she is seduced by the dashing Rodolphe and gives into her desires. In their affair, Emma believes she has finally found true, passionate...

Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal. The sixth of January 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event, which thus set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an assault...