Zola was born in Paris in 1840. His father, François Zola (originally Francesco Zola), was an Italian Engineer, born in Venice in 1795, who engineered the Zola Dam in Aix-en-Provence, and his mother, Émilie Aubert, was French. The family moved to Aix-en-Provence in the southeast when Émile was three years old. Four years later, in 1847, his father died, leaving his mother on a meager pension. In 1858, the Zolas moved to Paris, where Émile's childhood friend Paul Cézanne soon joined him. Zola started to write in the romantic style. His widowed mother had planned a law career for Émile, but he failed his Baccalauréat examination.