“The Mistake of Abbé Mouret” is Émile Zola’s fifth novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, published in 1875. Zola’s plan was to show, across the series of novels, how heredity and the surrounding environment affected members of one family during the Second Empire—the period of Napoleon III’s dictatorship. The novel is devoted to the life of the young priest Serge Mouret, torn between his religious calling and his love for a woman. But the love affair between the priest and the girl has no happy ending…