From the prologue, ruins and remnants of the past are constantly present in La Fortune des Rougon and they command a multi-level reading, between myth and history, eternity and current events. Designed from the very beginning as a story of the origins, the novel is an ode to bygone days and a meditation on destiny. From this perspective, the ruin—a tombstone, an old disused well, a section of wall, a shanty...—refers to old poorly repressed tragedies and contributes to wryly acquiring distance with respect to contemporary history. The mystery hovering around the character of the ancestor and the sacrificial destiny of the idyllic couple formed by Silvère and Miette fits the interpretation of the remains into the paradigm of sacred nature. With the family tree allegory, the novel turns into a cosmogonical and prophetic fable.