A work belonging to the last, the greatest and certainly the most characteristic phase of his career the final chapters date from but seven years or so before his death in 1850 has been strangely neglected in this country. Surely it deserves more honour than to the "Peau de Chadrin" or the "Contes Drolatiques" which are translated into English every few years or so? It presents a wonderfully subtle picture of provincial and of Parisian life in the middle years of Louis Philippe`s reign,when the aristocracy forces were still strugling to recover their balance after two revolutions, and to prevent the upsurge of those bourgeois forces that would finally dominate the country in the time of the Third Republic.