This was really a short story rather than a novella but nonetheless Balzac gives a complete picture of the de Fontaine family and of the youngest daughter Emilie in particular. She provides quite a different picture of feminity from Augustine, the heroine of "At the Sign of the Cat and Racket"! ( )

The Ball at Sceaux - The second short story in the Scenes from Private Life section of Balzac's La Comedie Humaine, this is a rather straightforward cautionary tale about a spoiled girl who frustrates her family's attempts to find her a husband by finding faults with all of her potential suitors. Demanding of physical perfection and noble aristocracy in a husband, she eventually falls in love with a mysterious young man at the ball, only to reject him when she discovers him working as a cloth merchant. He leaves town, she marries her uncle, and years later he's a wealthy peer of France. Womp womp. ( )