Rome

The priest of the Lourdes book goes to Rome with a manuscript on the Index, believing that the Church can be persuaded to stand with the poor, and spends three months in antechambers learning what the Vatican is. Zola went there himself in 1894 and asked for an audience with Leo XIII, which was refused. The city is drawn as an archaeology of power, and the audience with the Pope is the coldest scene he ever wrote. Fifty-seven plates, from Mantegna to Canaletto and Guardi, trace the cities of stone and water where the novel's power is enacted.