The Branding Needle or The Monastery of Charolles, a Tale of the First Communal Charter

Popular 19th century novel., in English translation. According to Wikipedia: "Joseph Marie Eugène Sue (20 January 1804 – 3 August 1857) was a French novelist… He was strongly affected by the Socialist ideas of the day, and these prompted his most famous works, the "anti-Catholic" novels: 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 though 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... His period of greatest success and popularity coincided with that of Alexandre Dumas, père, with whom he has been compared."