"Le Rêve" by Émile Zola is a novel published in 1888. An orphan girl raised by embroiderers becomes obsessed with tales of saints and martyrs, dreaming of rescue by a handsome prince. When she falls in love with the last descendant of a noble family, his father—a church monseigneur with his own painful past—forbids their union. As the girl's health declines, questions of virtue, heredity, and destiny converge toward a bittersweet resolution that will test everyone's capacity for redemption.