"Oh, cursed, cursed be the day, when, as I bent over my work, sullen with hate and despair, because, in spite of my incessant labor, I and mine wanted for everything, the Savior passed before my door. "Reviled, insulted, covered with blows, hardly able to sustain the weight of his heavy cross, He asked me to let Him rest a moment on my stone bench. The sweat poured from His forehead, His feet were bleeding, He was well-nigh sinking with fatigue, and He said to me, in a mild, heart-piercing voice: 'I suffer!' 'And I too suffer,' I replied, as with harsh anger I pushed Him from the place; 'I suffer, and no one comes to help me! I find no pity, and will give none. Go on! go on!' Then, with a deep sigh of pain, He answered, and spake this sentence: 'Verily, thou shalt go on till the day of thy redemption, for so wills the Father which art in heaven!' "And so my punishment began. Too late I opened these eyes to the light, too late I learned repentance and charity, too late I understood those divine words of Him I had outraged, words which should be the law of the whole human race. 'Love ye one another.'" At this moment, the storm burst forth in its murky majesty. One of those whirlwinds, which tear up trees by the roots and shake the foundations of the rocks, rushed over the hill rapid and loud as thunder. In the midst of the roaring of the hurricane, by the glare of the fiery flashes, the man with the black mark on his brow was seen descending the hill, stalking with huge strides among the rocks, and between trees bent beneath the efforts of the storm.

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.