文档介绍：At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
At the Sign of the Cat
and Racket
by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell
1
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
DEDICATION
To Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau
2
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
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 and
Vs which the horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front, outlined
by little parallel cracks in the plaster? It was evident that every beam
quivered in its mortices at the passing of the lightest vehicle. This
venerable structure was crowned by a triangular roof of which no example
will, ere long, be seen in Paris. This covering, warped by the extremes of
the Paris climate, projected three feet over the roadway, as much to protect
the threshold from the rainfall as to shelter the wall of a loft and its sill-
less dormer-window. This upper story was built of planks, overlapping
each other like slates, in order, no doubt, not to overweight the frail house.
One rainy morning in the month of March, a young man, carefully
wrapped in his cloak, stood under the awning of a shop opposite this old
house, which he was studying with the enthusiasm of an antiquary. In
point of fact, this relic of the civic life of the sixteenth century offered
more than one problem to the consideration of an observer. Each story
presented some singularity; on the first floor four tall, narrow windows,
close together, were filled as to the lower panes with boards, so as to
produce the doubtful light by which a clever salesman can ascribe to his
goods the color his customers inquire for. The young man seemed very
scornful of this part of the