Octave Feuillet

A young man of the Second Empire decides, on the death of his father, to live entirely without illusions - no religion, no scruple, no love - and applies the programme with complete success to politics, marriage and a mistress. Feuillet was the Empress Eugénie's librarian at Fontainebleau and the favourite novelist of the regime; this 1867 novel is his hardest, and the programme works exactly as designed.