With this story, The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn, closes the series of the nineteen historic novels comprised in Eugene Sue's monumental work The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages. They who have read the preceding eighteen stories will agree that from the moment they... Read More

Most persons know the French Revolution as a tremendous outburst in human affairs. Many know it as one of the race's great steps forward. That, however, it was the revolution which carried into power the then rising bourgeois, now capitalist, class; that this class, while appealing for and using the help of the working class,... Read More

The epoch covered by this, the 16th story of Eugene Sue's dramatic historic series, entitled The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages, extends over the turbulent yet formative era known in history as the Religious Reformation. The social system that had been developing since the epoch initiated by... Read More

Bulwer Lytton observes of fiction that, when aspiring at something higher than mere romance, it does not pervert, but elucidates the facts of the times in which the scene is placed; hence, that fiction serves to illustrate those truths which history is too often compelled to leave to the tale-teller, the dramatist and the poet.... Read More

Whether one will be satisfied with nothing but a scientific diagnosis in psychology, or a less ponderous and infinitely more lyric presentation of certain mental phenomena will do for him; whether the student of history insist on strict chronology, or whether he prize at its true value the meat and coloring of history; whether a... Read More

The first four stories of Eugene Sue's series of historic novels—The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages—are properly introductory to the wondrous drama in which, as indicated in the preface to the first story of the series, "one family, the descendants of a Gallic chief named Joel, typifies... Read More

Semiramis, Brunhild, Catherine of Medicis constitute a trinity of historic women unique in their greatness. Their ambition was boundless, their intellectual powers matchless, the depths of their immorality unfathomable. As such they were the scourges of their respective ages. Queen Brunhild, a central figure in this superb story, may be said to be the Sixth... Read More

The invasion of the Normans, or Northmen, or Norsemen—called throughout this brilliant story the Northmans—bears characteristics that distinguish it markedly from all the other European invasions. With all the others the migrations were brought on by home changes of soil and waterways that drove the invaders westward. War was only a means, the goal was... Read More

The turbulent epoch that rocked the cradle of the Carlovingian dynasty, the dynasty from which issued the colossal historic figure of Charlemagne, is the epoch of this touching story—the eighth of the series of Eugene Sue's historic novels known collectively under the title "The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across... Read More

The Age of Charlemagne is the watershed of the history of the present era. The rough barbarian flood that poured over Western Europe reaches in that age a turning point of which Charlemagne is eminently the incarnation. The primitive physical features of the barbarian begin to be blunted, or toned down by a new force... Read More

The Brass Bell; or, The Chariot of Death is the second of Eugene Sue's monumental serial known under the collective title of The Mysteries of the People; or History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages. The first story—The Gold Sickle; or, Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen—fittingly preludes the grand drama conceived... Read More

The invasion of Gaul by Clovis introduced feudalism in France, which is equivalent to saying in Europe, France being the teeming womb of the great historic events of that epoch. It goes without saying that so vast a social system as that of feudalism could not be perfected in a day, or even during one... Read More

Etienne Marcel, John Maillart, William Caillet, Adam the Devil and Charles the Wicked, King of Navarre, are the five leading personages in this story. Their figures and actions, the virtues and foibles of the ones, the vices of the others, the errors of all, are drawn with strict historic accuracy, all the five being historic... Read More

Among the historic phenomena of what may be called "modern antiquity," there is none comparable to that which was witnessed on the first day of the year 1000, together with its second or adjourned catastrophe thirty-two years later. The end of the world, at first daily expected by the Apostles, then postponed—upon the authority of... Read More

In my introduction to "The Silver Cross; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth," I said: "Eugene Sue wrote in French a monumental work—the Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family. It is a 'work of fiction'; yet it is the best universal history extant. Better than any work, avowedly on history, it graphically... Read More

The Gold Sickle; or, Hena the Virgin of the Isle of Sen, is the initial story of the series that Eugene Sue wrote under the collective title of The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages. The scheme of this great work of Sue's was stupendously ambitious—and the author... Read More

The travellers who now sail along the picturesque coasts within the district of the Bouches-du-Rhone—the peaceable inhabitants of shores perfumed by the orange-trees of Hyères, or the curious tourists, whom steamboats are continually transporting from Marseilles to Nice or to Gênes—are perhaps ignorant of the fact that two hundred years ago, under the flourishing administration... Read More

The narrow street known for many long years as the Charnier des Innocents (the Charnel-house of the Innocents), near the market, has always been noted for the large number of scriveners who have established their booths in this densely populated part of Paris. One fine morning in the month of May, 18—, a young girl... Read More

Eugene Sue wrote in French a monumental work: "The Mysteries of the People," or "History of a Proletarian Family." It is a "work of fiction;" yet it is the best universal history extant: better than any work, avowedly on history, it graphically traces the special features of the several systems of class-rule as they have... Read More

Elle avait un vice, l'orgueil, qui lui tenait lieu de toutes les qualités.[A] Commander Bernard, a resident of Paris, after having served under the Empire in the Marine Corps, and under the Restoration as a lieutenant in the navy, was retired about the year 1830, with the brevet rank of captain. Honourably mentioned again and... Read More

The palace of the Élysée-Bourbon,—the old hôtel of the Marquise de Pompadour,—situated in the middle of the Faubourg St. Honoré, was, previous to the last revolution, furnished, as every one knows, for the occupancy of foreign royal highnesses,—Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Mussulman, from the princes of the German confederation to Ibrahim Pacha. About the end... Read More

IN the year 1828 any tourist who was on his way from Blois to the little town of Pont Brillant to visit—as travellers seldom fail to do—the famous castle of that name, the magnificent feudal abode of the Marquises Pont Brillant, would have been obliged to pass a farmhouse standing near the edge of the... Read More

On a beautiful, bright morning of the month of May, 18—, a young girl of eighteen years or thereabouts, whose pale, melancholy face reflected only too plainly the wretchedness and privations of her daily life, was wending her way, timidly and with hesitating steps, through that populous quarter of the city known as the Charnier... Read More

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF The Wandering Jew EUGENE SUE (1804-1857) Time and again physicians and seamen have made noteworthy reputations as novelists. But it is rare in the annals of literature that a man trained in both professions should have gained his greatest fame as a writer of novels. Eugene Sue began his... Read More

It was on a cold and rainy night, towards the end of October, 1838, that a tall and powerful man, with an old broad-brimmed straw hat upon his head, and clad in a blue cotton carter's frock, which hung loosely over trousers of the same material, crossed the Pont au Change, and darted with a... Read More