The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendahl

This, the last book by Stendahl, is the story of an Italian nobleman in the Napoleonic era and later. It was a masterpiece, even in it's own time, and admired by Balzac, Tolstoy, André Gide, di Lampedusa and Henry James. It was inspired by an inauthentic Italian account of the dissolute youth of Alessandro Farnese, and starts more as a historical soap opera than an enduring classic. The life of Farnese closely mimics that of Fabrizio. (Farnese became Pope in 1534, had a beautiful aunt, Vandozza Farnese, who was the mistress of the cunning Rodrigo Borgia. He murdered a young woman's servant, was imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo, escaped by means of a very long rope, and maintained as his mistress a well-born woman called Cleria. In Stendahl's version, the story opens with Fabrizio in prison, but he is soon set free and stumbles from one potential catastrophe to another, always managing to keep his head just above water, and while he deserves the trouble he gets into and more, we are always rooting for him to get away to have just one more adventure. An excellent 19th century French novel that you never heard of is well worth seeking out.