The Wandering Jew

Eugene Sue serialized this in 1844 and half of France waited for the next installment. Seven scattered heirs of a Huguenot family, driven abroad by persecution a century and a half earlier, are summoned to a house in Paris where a fortune has been quietly multiplying, and each of them has to survive the journey there. Working against them is the Jesuit order, whose agents move by patience, blackmail and forged letters rather than swords. Watching over them are two figures out of legend, the Wandering Jew and his sister, who can help only from a distance. Sue’s anticlericalism was fierce enough to feed real political argument, and the melodrama still moves at speed. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.