A place

Panthéon

3 stories from this place.

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.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Panthéon, Paris

The Two Shots Fired at Dreyfus at the Panthéon During Zola's Reburial in June 1908

When Émile Zola's remains were transferred to the Panthéon on 4 June 1908, the journalist Louis Grégori shot Alfred Dreyfus twice in the arm at point-blank range. Both bullets struck. Dreyfus survived. Grégori was acquitted by a Parisian jury three months later.

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The Coroner’s Report June 18, 2026 · 21 bis rue de Bruxelles, 9th arrondissement, Paris

The Novelist Who May Have Been Murdered by His Own Chimney

Émile Zola was found dead in his Paris bedroom on the morning of 29 September 1902, asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from a smoking fire. The chimney was blocked. A bricklayer's deathbed confession decades later named the man who had blocked it.

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