Publisher's Synopsis
The plot for At the Sign of the Cat and Racket, if such a stately name can be given to so delicate a sketch, is of course open to downright British judgment to pronounce the self-sacriiice of Lebas more ignoblethan touching, the conduct of Théodore too childish to deserve the excuses sometimes possible for passionate inconstancy, and the character of Augustine angelically idiotic. 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. 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.
