Honoré de Balzac 
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket 

At the Sign of the Cat and Racket is a novella by Honoré de Balzac, first published in 1830. It is the first work in the Scènes de la vie privée, a selection of writings which make up the first volume of Balzac’s La Comédie humaine. It tells the story of the relationship between the lofty artist Théodore de Sommervieux and Augustine Guillaume, the down-to-earth daughter of a cloth merchant.