 It is not set in or near Paris, nor is it set in Zola's fictional Plassans, the town where the family originates.Pauline's somewhat tenuous and unexplored connection to her Rougon and Macquart relatives is the only link to the rest of the series.Zola's plan for these novels was to show how heredity and environment worked on members of one family over the course of the Second French Empire.