80. Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac

Eugenie's father Grandet is a miser.  His nephew Charles arrives from Paris with a letter revealing his father has lost his fortune and committed suicide.Eugenie falls in love with Charles and gives him her savings, so he can make his fortune in the Indies. When she confesses this to her father, he locks her in her room on bread and water.  Eugenie's mother is dying, and Grandet is worried that her fortune will go to Eugenie, so he asks her to renounce her claim to her mother's estate.  Grandet dies.

Meanwhile Charles has made his fortune in the Indies and forgotten Eugenie.  He has also forgotten his father's debts, and contracted marriage with a noble but impoverished family.  Eugenie concludes "one can only suffer and die".  She settles her uncle's debts and marries her father's friend, the president, who dies not long after.

Eugenie is rich, and still young, but lives like a miser.

(I admit I read several more de Balzac novels after this one.  I can't help thinking that in historical romances, when young English women read scandalous French novels, they were reading books like this.)

79. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

Set in 15th century Paris, with a lot of descriptions of architecture.  It took me a while to realise that it's about the city, as much as the people.

The hunchback is Quasimodo, abandoned at birth on the steps of Notre-Dame Cathedral and adopted by the Arch Deacon, Claude.  Claude lusts after the beautiful Esmeralda (stolen by gypsies as a child), who is in love with Phoebus, a soldier.  Claude gets Quasimodo to kidnap Esmeralda, Phoebus rescues her, Quasimodo is flogged, Claude kills Phoebus and Esmeralda is arrested and hanged.  Esmeralda's true mother discovers her identity too late.