At the Sign of the Cat and Racket and Other Stories

At the Sign of the Cat and Racket (La Maison du Chatqui-Pelote, 1830) is the pathetic history of a girl who marries out of her own sphere, and fails to win the affection that is necessity of her nature. Quiet bourgeois life is depicted with Dutch minuteness, and there is an elaborate description of a large business establishment. The Scats Ball (The Peer of France, 1830), satirizes people who affect to despise business. The Purse (1832) Sir Walter Bezant calls ?one of the most charming little bits of love, innocence, and nature in all Balzac.' Madame Firmiani (1832) is a slight social comedy, full of brightness. La Vendetta (1830) is the history of a rich and talented girl of Corsican parentage who marries a man with whom her family is at a feud, and reaps a harvest of calamities.