Eugene Sue was a nineteenth-century French novelist regarded, nowadays, as of the second tier -- and sometimes lower than that. But we think that there's a brilliance here, and that there's a reason he was most famous for his imaginative and dramatic commentaries on French life. His famous Arthur of 1838 represented the fashionable high life, while his 1843 Les Mysteres de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris) showed the life of the poor in France so well that it was partly inspiration for Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. This same theme is exhibited in a lesser known novel, A Cardinal Sin, an enchanting and lively tale of the powers of charity and love. This dynamic story follows the lives of two persevering young lovers growing up in the poverty of nineteenth-century France, and how the lives of those around them are affected by their intense devotion. When a tragedy occurs, and the couple finds themselves with a sudden windfall of money, the importance of loyalty as well as charity comes into play.

Author Biography

Marie-Joseph "Eugene" Sue (1804 - 1857) was a French novelist. He was one of several authors who popularized the genre of the serial novel in France with his very popular and widely imitated The Mysteries of Paris, which was published in a newspaper from 1842 to 1843. His naval experiences supplied much of the materials of his first novels, Kernock le pirate (1830), Atar-Gull (1831), La Salamandre (1832), La Coucaratcha (1832) and others, which were composed at the height of the Romantic movement of 1830. In the quasi-historical style he wrote Jean Cavalier and Latreaumont. His Mathilde (1841) contains the first known expression of the popular proverb "La vengeance se mange tres-bien froide," lately expressed in English as "Revenge is a dish best served cold." He was strongly affected by the socialist ideas of the day and these prompted his most famous works, the "anti-Catholic" novels: The Mysteries of Paris and The Wandering Jew, which were among the most popular specimens of the serial novel. These works depicted the intrigues of the nobility and the harsh life of the underclass to a wide public. Les Mysteres de Paris spawned a class of imitations all over the world, the city mysteries.