AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET AND OTHER STORIES - - INTRODUCTION -- IN the very interesting preface, dated July 1842, which Balzac prefixed to the first collection of the Combdie Hmaine, he endeavours, naturally enough, to represent the division into Scdnes de la Vie Parisienne, etc., as a rational and reasoned one. Although not quite arbitrary, it was of course to a great extent determined by considerations which were not those of design and we did not require the positive testimony which we find in the Letters to tell us that in the authors view, as well as in our own, not a few of the stories might have been shifted over from one division to another, and have filled their place just as well in the other as in the one. La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote, however, which originally bore the much less happy title of Gloire et Malheur, was a Sdne de la Vie Pride from the first, and it bears out better than some of its companions its authors expressed intention of making these scenes represent youth, whether Parisian or Provincial. Few of Balzacs stories have united the general suffrage for touching grace more than this and there are few better examples of his minute Dutch-painting than the opening passages, or of his unconquerable delight in the details of business than his sketch of Monsieur Guillaumes establishment and its ways. The French equivalent of the Complete Tradesman of Defoe lasted much longer than his English counterpart but, except in the smaller provincial towns, he is said to be uncommon now. As for the plot, if such a stately name can be given to so delicate a sketch, it is of course open to downright British judgment to pronounce the self-sacriiice of Lebas more ignoble than touching, the conduct of ThCodore too childish to deserve the excuses sometimes possible for passionate inconstancy, and the character of Augustine angelically idiotic. This last outrage, if it were committed, would indeed only be an instance of the irreconcilable difference which almost to the present v day divides English and French ideas of ideally perfect girlhood, and of that state of womanhood which corresponds thereto. The candew adorable which the Frenchman adores and exhibits in the girl the uncompromising, though mortal, passion of the woman are too different from any ideal that we have entertained, except for a very short period in the eighteenth century. But there are few more pathetic and charming impersonations of this other ideal than Augustine de Somrnervieux. All the stories associated with La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote, according to French standards41, perhaps, according to all but the very strictest and oldest-fashioned of English-are perfectly free from the slightest objection on the score of that propriety against which Balzac has an amusing if not quite exact tirade in one of his books. And this is evidently not accidental, for the preface above referred to is an elaborate attempt to rebut the charge of impropriety, and to show that the author could draw virtuous as well as unvirtuous characters. But they are not, taking them as a whole, and omitting the Cat and Racket itself, quite examples of putting the best foot foremost. Le Bal de Sceaux, with its satire on contempt for trade, is in some ways more like Balzacs young friend and pupil Charles de Bernard than like himself and I believe it attracted English notice pretty early. At least I seem, when quite a boy, and long before I read the Comidie Hmaine, to have seen an English version or paraphrase of it...