See also: the Dream (homonymy)

the Dream is a Romance of Emile Zola published in 1888, the sixteenth volume of the series Rougon-Macquart . Zola approaches there the topic of the Religion, but in a way much less violent and polemic that it had not done it in the Conquest of Plassans or the Fault of the abbot Mouret . This time, it is interested in the popular faith and the revival of the Mysticisme in the French company of second half of the 19th century.

The history proceeds in Picardy, in a city called Beaumont (Zola largely took as a starting point Cambrai to describe this city). Heroin is Angélique Rougon, girl of Sidonie Rougon and an unknown father (it was born fifteen months after the death from the husband from her mother). As of its birth, it was placed by the midwife with the Public assistance, then entrusted to a nurse in Nievre, a florist, and finally to Rabier, a family of tanners who maltreat it. One Christmas Eve, it decides to flee Rabier, and is collected by a couple of embroiderers, the Hubert, who have it stiff discovery, leant with a pillar of the cathedral of Beaumont. This very pious family (they make embroideries for clothing and ornaments ecclesiastical) lives in an any small house leant with the cathedral. Angelica, which became the pupil of the Hubert, shows much application and taste for the embroidery. At the same time it reads, and discovers the gilded Légende , a work which will change its life of teenager. She is identified with martyrdoms, dreams to have the same glorious destiny as they, watching for by the window the appearance who will change his life.

This appearance is finally appeared as a charming young man, Félicien, painter and glass maker whom it identifies with Georges saint descended from his stained glass. The love is born in them, but their families oppose their marriage: of side, Hubertine Hubert, its mother adoptive, which married in spite of the prohibition of his/her mother and estimates of to be punished by the fact that it cannot have of child, does not want marriage dictated by passion; even thing for the father of Félicien, Monseigneur d' Hautecœur, bishop entered the orders following the death of its wife. Finally, indicator that Angélique is consumed little by little in front of this prohibition, the two families grant the marriage. But Angélique dies at the exit of the church, after having given to Félicien its first and its last kiss.