At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

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