The sexually rooted nature of the violence that is done is also underscored by repeated descriptions of the railway and its trains in terms of sexual imagery. The train entering and emerging from tunnels has lent itself to what may seem to the present-day reader to have become a range of rather clichéd metaphors of sexual arousal and penetration. This was not the case at the time Zola was writing. Zola uses such imagery in a resourceful and frequently poignant way. Flore walks resolutely to her end by entering a tunnel in the face of an approaching express. She unfastens her blouse and lets it hang from her shoulders. As the train enters the tunnel she walks towards it as if to greet a woman friend. The moment of impact, ‘the final embrace’, is described as ‘a last gesture of defiance and revolt’. The half-naked corpse is recovered an hour later. The head is ‘a terrible mess’ but the rest of the body is ‘without a mark’, ‘remarkably beautiful - strong and unblemished’ (X). Zola’s description contains complex and inexhaustible associations of a female assertion of identity and independence, of female despair and self-sacrifice, of male dominance and aggressiveness and also, surprisingly perhaps, of male innocence. The episode suggests much more than it says. In a less intensely dramatic vein, the monotonous, mechanical routine of Misard’s job as a section operator echoes the dehumanized, joyless nature of his existence and the systematic, relentless way in which he undermines his wife’s health. The part played by the railway in the novel is thus much more than an incidental setting or background; the railway becomes an active ingredient in the novel’s discourse of sexual attrition and violence.

In its account of the judiciary and the law the novel is at its most politicized and polemical. Two judicial inquiries and the trial which follows them result in a travesty of justice, and one which is sanctioned not only by those directly responsible for controlling the operation of the law, but also by the government and ultimately by the Emperor himself. To make matters worse, the public is led to believe that justice has been done and that the process of law has resulted in a singular triumph of right-mindedness and decency.

In France during the Second Empire, as now, the judiciary was an instrument of executive authority rather than an authority separate from government. It was overseen by the Ministry of Justice, whose officers were answerable directly to the Emperor. At a time of more authoritarian rule, as under Napoleon III, such an arrangement rendered the law subject to pressure from above, especially when it had to deal with cases that might prove embarrassing to the state, and even more so if such cases occurred at times of political uncertainty. The inquiry into the murder of Grandmorin, a respected High Court judge who has received an official decoration and who regularly attends gatherings at the imperial palace, but who also, it is rumoured, leads a life of unrestrained profligacy, is immediately identified as being politically sensitive. Moreover the inquiry occurs at a moment when the government is under considerable pressure, being threatened with its first ever electoral defeat.

It is Monsieur Camy-Lamotte, the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Justice, who has the responsibility of ensuring that the government is not compromised and that the judicial investigation is kept under tight control. The fact that such an operation is delegated by the Minister of Justice to someone who is less in the public eye (Camy-Lamotte is the equivalent of a permanent under-secretary) is itself a face-saving political manoeuvre: Camy-Lamotte knows that if things go wrong, he will have to carry the can. Zola makes it quite clear in which direction Camy-Lamotte’s loyalties lie. His sole concern is the reputation of the government he serves. Justice itself he regards as a ‘wearisome business’ (V) and something which, if he can find discreet ways of doing so, he is perfectly prepared to override. He turns a blind eye to the questionable morality of Grandmorin’s private life; in fact Grandmorin’s apparently unquenchable sexual appetite is something he envies. If Camy-Lamotte has any interest in ascertaining the truth, it is ‘in order, if necessary, to conceal it’ (IV). Camy-Lamotte, it seems, is called upon regularly to deal with these ‘more delicate matters’ (V) and is summoned to the imperial palace almost daily; the sort of scandal which the Grandmorin affair risks exposing is clearly not an isolated case. The Secretary-General is presented as a shrewd, cynical and ruthless manipulator, operating from the heavily curtained secrecy of his private residence in Paris and prepared to employ every means at his disposal to protect the interests of his political masters. He knows exactly how to use the established process of law to his own advantage. In France in the nineteenth century investigation into a crime was passed to the judiciary at an early stage and placed in the hands of an ‘examining magistrate’ (juge d‘instruction). The examining magistrate’s investigation (instruction) was conducted in private.