This file includes: The Brass Bell or the Chariot of Death: a Tale of Caesar's Gallic Invasion, A Cardinal Sin, A Romance of the West Indies, and The Wandering Jew.According to Wikipedia: 'Joseph Marie Eugène Sue (20 January 1804 - 3 August 1857) was a French novelist... His naval experiences supplied much of the materials of his first novels, Kernock le pirate (1830), Atar-Gull (1831), La Salamandre (2 vols., 1832), La Coucaratcha (4 vols., 1832-1834), and others, which were composed at the height of the Romantic movement of 1830. In the quasi-historical style he wrote Jean Cavalier, ou Les Fanatiques des Cevennes (4 vols., 1840) and Lautréaumont (2 vols., 1837). He was strongly affected by the Socialist ideas of the day, and these prompted his most famous works: Les Mystères de Paris (10 vols., 1842-1843) and Le Juif errant (tr. 'The Wandering Jew') (10 vols., 1844-1845), which were among the most popular specimens of the roman-feuilleton. He followed these up with some singular and not very edifying books: Les Sept pêchés capitaux (16 vols., 1847-1849), which contained stories to illustrate each of the Seven Deadly Sins, Les Mystères du peuple (1849-1856), which was suppressed by the censor in 1857, and several others, all on a very large scale, though the number of volumes gives an exaggerated idea of their length. Some of his books, among them Le Juif Errant and the Mystères de Paris, were dramatized by himself, usually in collaboration with others. His period of greatest success and popularity coincided with that of Alexandre Dumas, père, with whom he has been compared. Sue has neither Dumas's wide range of subject, nor, above all, his faculty of conducting the story by means of lively dialogue; he has, however, a command of terror which Dumas seldom or never attained.'
Up to that moment I had witnessed the scene panting, almost crazy with grief and rage. Slowly my heart, struggling against the sorcery of the"horse-dealer," was gaining the upper hand. But at that cry, uttered by you and your sister, the charm broke with a clap. All my intelligence, all my courage rushed back to me. The sight of you two gave me such a shock, it threw me into such a transport of rage that, unable to break my irons, I rose upon my feet, and, with my hands still pinioned behind me, my legs still loaded with heavy chains, I bounded out of my stall with two leaps, and fell like a thunderbolt upon the old patrician. The shock caused the old man to roll under me. In default of the liberty of my hands to strangle him, I bit him in the face, near the neck. The"horse-dealers" and their keepers threw themselves upon me; but bearing with all my weight upon the hideous old debauchee, who was howling at the top of his voice, I kept my teeth in his flesh. The monster's blood filled my mouth--a shower of whip lashes and blows from sticks and stones rained upon me--yet I budged not. No more than our old war dog Deber-Trud the man-eater did I drop my prey.--No!--Like the dog, when I did let go, it was only to carry away between my teeth--a strip of flesh, a bleeding mouthful that I spat back into Trymalcion's hideous, tortured face, as he had spat at the Gallic women.
"Father! Father!" you cried out to me through the tumult. Wishing then to approach you two, my children, I stood up, an object of terror--aye, terror. For a moment a circle of fear surrounded the Gallic slave, with his load of irons.
"Father! Father!" you cried again, stretching out your little arms, in spite of the keepers who held you back. I made a bound toward you, but the merchant, from the top of the cage where you had been confined, suddenly threw a large piece of cloth over my head. At the same time I was seized by the legs, thrown down, and tied with a thousand bonds. The cloth, which covered my head and shoulders, was tied down around my neck, and through it they made a gap, which unfortunately permitted me to breathe--I had hoped to smother.
I felt myself being carried across to my own booth, where I was thrown on the straw, incapable of making the slightest motion. Quite a while later I heard the centurion, my new master, in a sharp altercation with the"horse-dealer" and the merchant who had sold Syomara to Trymalcion. Presently they all went out. Silence reigned around me. Some time later, the dealer returned; he approached me; he kicked me angrily; he tore off the cover from my face, and said to me in a voice trembling with rage:
"Scoundrel! Do you know what it has cost me, that mouthful of flesh you tore out of the face of the noble Trymalcion? Do you know, ferocious beast? That mouthful of flesh cost me twenty sous of gold! More than half of what I sold you for, for I am responsible for your misdeeds, wretch! while you are in my stall, double villain! So that it is I who have made a present of your daughter to the old man. She was sold to him for twenty gold sous, which I paid in his stead. He insisted upon it. And even so I got off cheaply. He demanded that indemnity."[33]
"That monster is not dead! Hena! he
