We will thus take the hand that flings the fateful acid as the schematic stenographic representation of a narrative gesture and an ideological fantasy more accessibly revealed and betrayed in the vengeful and monitory figure of Sue’s Parisian Harun-al-Rashid, Prince Rodolphe, whose mission in life is the scourging of criminals, evildoers, and villains mostly drawn from the poorer classes, as Marx observed in his lengthiest piece of literary criticism.2
