by Émile Zola · 1871
During the December 1851 coup d'état, republican insurgents march through the Provençal town of Plassans singing the Marseillaise; the laborer Silvère and the young Miette, marked by her father's crime, share a last embrace before she seizes the insurgent banner and marches to her death. The opening volume of Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle.