Men Go to Battle

Betsy Small tells Henry Mellon that she is reading "The Wandering Jew," a sprawling French novel by Eugene Sou, published as a serial in 1844 and thereafter translated and published in popular magazines around the world. Henry, who can barely read, lies when asked if he has read it. In a subsequent scene, Betsy reads aloud a passage from the novel involving the characters Father Rodin, Mme. de la Sainte-Colombe and Dumoulin. Despite its title, this book is not so much anti-Semitic as anti-Jesuitical, portraying Rodin and other Jesuits as conspiratorial, greedy and vicious.