Excerpt from At the Sign of the Cat and Racket: La Maison Du Chat-Qui-Pelote Racket' itself, quite examples of putting the best foot foremost. Le Ba] de Sceaux, ' with its satire on contempt for trade, is in some ways more like Balzac's young friend and pupil Charles de Bernard than like himself; andi believe it attracted English notice pretty early. At least I seem, when quite a boy, and long before I read the Comea'z'e Humaine, to have seen an English version or paraphrase of it. 'la Bourse though agreeable, is a little slight and La Vendetta might have been written on so well known a donnee by many persons besides Balzac. It happens, moreover, to contrast most un fortunately with the terrible and exquisite perfection of Merimee's 'mateo Falcone.' I should rank 'madame Firmiani' a good deal higher than any of these three, though it too is a little slight, and though it is not in Balzac's most characteristic or important manner. Rather, perhaps, does it remind us of the Physiologies' and the other social 'skits' and sketches which he was writing for the Caricature and other papers at the time. Still, the various descriptions of the heroine have a point and sparkle which are almost peculiar to the not quite mature work of men of genius and the actual story has a light ness which, perhaps, would have disappeared if Balzac had handled it at greater length. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.