Isidore Lechat

Rather than specializing in just one branch of trade, industry or finance, he has invested in everything, for instance into the press, modern agriculture and electricity.

However, Octave Mirbeau recognizes that this predator, who sows misery everywhere around him, is an "idealist" in his own way and that his projects are potentially progressive, because they contribute to the development of productive forces.

Cynical and vulgar, Isidore Lechat is a nouveau riche who hides his extraordinary capacity to rob his victims behind the silver tongue of a bon vivant and disarms them.

Nevertheless, he is totally blind in his private life; he does not realize that his wife is lost and unhappy, his beloved son Xavier is a slacker, his daughter Germaine is disgusted and is having love affair right in front of him.

Furthermore, the libido dominandi of Lechat is powerless over love and death: his son dies in an automobile accident, and her daughter goes away with her lover, Lucien Garraud.