In the Rougon-Macquart cycle, Zola portrays an industrial society which has reached the point where it is feeding on itself in its headlong rush towards growth. Not only do machines and capital disintegrate, but human beings also give in to the excesses in which they are flung : excess of misery, of lust, of libido… The collapse of the Voreux mines in Germinal, the extraordinary consuming machine represented by the Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) 2, the human and material damage wreaked by the courtesan Nana, the financial disasters of the speculator Saccard, are all figures of the drive towards the cataclysm of the Debacle (La débâcle) 3. The Rougon-Macquarts’ hereditary line of fault best represents this death drive, which governs the society of the Second Empire.