DeadlyCurious
Menu
A place

Montmartre Cemetery

2 stories from this place.

The Footnote June 24, 2026 · 21bis rue de Bruxelles, Paris

The Wife Who Survived the Carbon-Monoxide Night and Outlived Her Husband by Twenty-Three Years

Alexandrine Zola was sleeping next to Émile when the chimney filled their Paris bedroom with carbon monoxide on the night of 28 September 1902. She woke up. He did not. She lived another twenty-three years, becoming the principal custodian of his literary estate and an unexpectedly forceful figure in the post-Affair Dreyfusard movement.

Read the story →
The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Montmartre Cemetery, Paris

The Funeral Oration That Said Zola Was a Moment of the Human Conscience and Cost Its Author His Académie Standing

Anatole France delivered the funeral oration for Émile Zola at Montmartre Cemetery on 5 October 1902. His phrase that Zola had been "a moment of the human conscience" became one of the most quoted lines in French public memory. France was effectively shunned by the antisemitic faction of the Académie française for the next decade.

Read the story →