Zola died on 29 September 1902 of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by an improperly ventilated chimney.[36] His funeral on 5 October was attended by thousands. Alfred Dreyfus initially had promised not to attend the funeral, but was given permission by Zola's widow and attended.[37][38] At the time of his death Zola had just completed a novel, Vérité, about the Dreyfus trial. A sequel, Justice, had been planned, but was not completed.
Gravestone of Émile Zola at cimetière Montmartre; his remains are now interred in the Panthéon.His enemies were blamed for his death because of previous attempts on his life, but nothing could be proven at the time. Expressions of sympathy arrived from everywhere in France; for a week the vestibule of his house was crowded with notable writers, scientists, artists, and politicians who came to inscribe their names in the registers.[39] On the other hand, Zola's enemies used the opportunity to celebrate in malicious glee.[40] Writing in L'Intransigeant, Henri Rochefort claimed Zola had committed suicide, having discovered Dreyfus to be guilty.
Zola was initially buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, but on 4 June 1908, just five years and nine months after his death, his remains were relocated to the Panthéon, where he shares a crypt with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.[41] The ceremony was disrupted by an assassination attempt on Alfred Dreyfus by Louis Grégori, a disgruntled journalist and admirer of Edouard Drumont, in which Dreyfus was wounded in the arm by the gunshot. Grégori was acquitted by the Parisian court which accepted his defense that he had not meant to kill Dreyfus, meaning merely to graze him.
Graves of Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and Émile Zola at the Panthéon in ParisA 1953 investigation by journalist Jean Bedel published in the newspaper Libération under the headline "Was Zola assassinated?" raised the idea that Zola's death might have been a murder rather than an accident.[42] It is based on the revelation by Norman pharmacist Pierre Hacquin, who was told by chimney-sweep Henri Buronfosse that he intentionally blocked the chimney of Zola's apartment in Paris.[42] Literary historian Alain Pagès believes that is likely true[43] and Zola's great-granddaughters, Brigitte Émile-Zola and Martine Le Blond-Zola, corroborate this explanation of Zola's poisoning by carbon monoxide. As reported in L'Orient-Le Jour, Brigitte Émile-Zola recounts that her grandfather Jacques Émile-Zola, son of Émile Zola, told her at the age of eight that, in 1952, a man came to his house to give him information about his father's death. The man had been with a dying friend, who had confessed to taking money to plug Emile Zola's chimney.[44]
