AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC




Translated by Clara Bell




DEDICATION

To Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau




AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET



Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner of the Rue du
Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those delightful houses which
enable historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threatening
walls of this tumbledown abode seemed to have been decorated with
hieroglyphics. For what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs