'He loved power for power's sake . . . He was without question the greatest of the Rougons.' His Excellency Eug ne 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 echelons of French Second Empire society, including the Imperial court, it focuses on the fluctuating fortunes of the authoritarian Eug ne Rougon, the "vice-Emperor."...