Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 December 1844: 'The only work of Eugene Sue which I have read among those you ask about, is "Le Salamandre" [...] As strange a work it is as ever was written -- with few indications of the power to come. The only remarkable thing is the preface, in which, by way of reason for making all his people unhappy in this world, or rather for taking them out of it by being shot and shooting themselves, he says that to represent good people as successful in this world and rogues as unsuccessful would take away the chief argument for a future life.'