His Excellency Eugene Rougon

''He loved power for power''s sake . . . He was without question the greatest of the Rougons.'' His Excellency Eugène Rougon (1876) is the sixth novel in Zola''s twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle. A political novel set in the corridors of power and in the upper échelons of French Second Empire society, including the Imperial court, it focuses on the fluctuating fortunes of the authoritarian Eug...