At the Sign of the Cat and Racket, Paperback/Honoré de Balzac

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.