At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

H >> Honore De Balzac >> At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

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
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
house; his eyes had not yet rested on it. The windows of the second
floor, where the Venetian blinds were drawn up, revealing little dingy
muslin curtains behind the large Bohemian glass panes, did not
interest him either. His attention was attracted to the third floor,
to the modest sash-frames of wood, so clumsily wrought that they might
have found a place in the Museum of Arts and Crafts to illustrate the
early efforts of French carpentry. These windows were glazed with
small squares of glass so green that, but for his good eyes, the young
man could not have seen the blue-checked cotton curtains which
screened the mysteries of the room from profane eyes. Now and then the
watcher, weary of his fruitless contemplation, or of the silence in
which the house was buried, like the whole neighborhood, dropped his
eyes towards the lower regions. An involuntary smile parted his lips
each time he looked at the shop, where, in fact, there were some
laughable details.

A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which appeared to
have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, had been encrusted
with as many coats of different paint as there are of rouge on an old
duchess' cheek. In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved
joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets.
This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be
said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical
a caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big
as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous
ball, returned by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color,
and accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest that the
artist had meant to make game of the shop-owner and of the passing
observer. Time, while impairing this artless painting, had made it yet
more grotesque by introducing some uncertain features which must have
puzzled the conscientious idler. For instance, the cat's tail had been
eaten into in such a way that it might now have been taken for the
figure of a spectator--so long, and thick, and furry were the tails of
our forefathers' cats. To the right of the picture, on an azure field
which ill-disguised the decay of the wood, might be read the name
"Guillaume," and to the left, "Successor to Master Chevrel." Sun and
rain had worn away most of the gilding parsimoniously applied to the
letters of this superscription, in which the Us and Vs had changed
places in obedience to the laws of old-world orthography.

To quench the pride of those who believe that the world is growing
cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug surpasses everything, it
may be observed that these signs, of which the origin seems so
whimsical to many Paris merchants, are the dead pictures of once
living pictures by which our roguish ancestors contrived to tempt
customers into their houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey,
and others, were animals in cages whose skills astonished the
passer-by, and whose accomplishments prove the patience of the
fifteenth-century artisan. Such curiosities did more to enrich their
fortunate owners than the signs of "Providence," "Good-faith," "Grace
of God," and "Decapitation of John the Baptist," which may still be
seen in the Rue Saint-Denis.

However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to admire the
cat, which a minute's attention sufficed to stamp on his memory. The
young man himself had his peculiarities. His cloak, folded after the
manner of an antique drapery, showed a smart pair of shoes, all the
more remarkable in the midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white
silk stockings, on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had
just come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball; for at this early hour
he had in his hand a pair of white gloves, and his black hair, now out
of curl, and flowing over his shoulders, showed that it had been
dressed _a la Caracalla_, a fashion introduced as much by David's
school of painting as by the mania for Greek and Roman styles which
characterized the early years of this century.

In spite of the noise made by a few market gardeners, who, being late,
rattled past towards the great market-place at a gallop, the busy
street lay in a stillness of which the magic charm is known only to
those who have wandered through deserted Paris at the hours when its
roar, hushed for a moment, rises and spreads in the distance like the
great voice of the sea. This strange young man must have seemed as
curious to the shopkeeping folk of the "Cat and Racket" as the "Cat
and Racket" was to him. A dazzlingly white cravat made his anxious
face look even paler than it really was. The fire that flashed in his
black eyes, gloomy and sparkling by turns, was in harmony with the
singular outline of his features, with his wide, flexible mouth,
hardened into a smile. His forehead, knit with violent annoyance, had
a stamp of doom. Is not the forehead the most prophetic feature of a
man? When the stranger's brow expressed passion the furrows formed in
it were terrible in their strength and energy; but when he recovered
his calmness, so easily upset, it beamed with a luminous grace which
gave great attractiveness to a countenance in which joy, grief, love,
anger, or scorn blazed out so contagiously that the coldest man could
not fail to be impressed.

He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer-window of the
loft was suddenly flung open, that he did not observe the apparition
of three laughing faces, pink and white and chubby, but as vulgar as
the face of Commerce as it is seen in sculpture on certain monuments.
These three faces, framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs
floating among the clouds that surround God the Father. The
apprentices snuffed up the exhalations of the street with an eagerness
that showed how hot and poisonous the atmosphere of their garret must
be. After pointing to the singular sentinel, the most jovial, as he
seemed, of the apprentices retired and came back holding an instrument
whose hard metal pipe is now superseded by a leather tube; and they
all grinned with mischief as they looked down on the loiterer, and
sprinkled him with a fine white shower of which the scent proved that
three chins had just been shaved. Standing on tiptoe, in the farthest
corner of their loft, to enjoy their victim's rage, the lads ceased
laughing on seeing the haughty indifference with which the young man
shook his cloak, and the intense contempt expressed by his face as he
glanced up at the empty window-frame.

At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower half of one of
the clumsy windows on the third floor by the aid of the sash runners,
of which the pulley so often suddenly gives way and releases the heavy
panes it ought to hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long
waiting. The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the
white cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill
of tumbled muslin, which gave her head a look of exquisite innocence.
Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here and
there through little openings left by her movements in sleep. No
expression of embarrassment detracted from the candor of her face, or
the calm look of eyes immortalized long since in the sublime works of
Raphael; here were the same grace, the same repose as in those
Virgins, and now proverbial. There was a delightful contrast between
the cheeks of that face on which sleep had, as it were, given high
relief to a superabundance of life, and the antiquity of the heavy
window with its clumsy shape and black sill. Like those day-blowing
flowers, which in the early morning have not yet unfurled their cups,
twisted by the chills of night, the girl, as yet hardly awake, let her
blue eyes wander beyond the neighboring roofs to look at the sky;
then, from habit, she cast them down on the gloomy depths of the
street, where they immediately met those of her adorer. Vanity, no
doubt, distressed her at being seen in undress; she started back, the
worn pulley gave way, and the sash fell with the rapid run, which in
our day has earned for this artless invention of our forefathers an
odious name, _Fenetre a la Guillotine_. The vision had disappeared. To
the young man the most radiant star of morning seemed to be hidden by
a cloud.

During these little incidents the heavy inside shutters that protected
the slight windows of the shop of the "Cat and Racket" had been
removed as if by magic. The old door with its knocker was opened back
against the wall of the entry by a man-servant, apparently coeval with
the sign, who, with a shaking hand, hung upon it a square of cloth, on
which were embroidered in yellow silk the words: "Guillaume, successor
to Chevrel." Many a passer-by would have found it difficult to guess
the class of trade carried on by Monsieur Guillaume. Between the
strong iron bars which protected his shop windows on the outside,
certain packages, wrapped in brown linen, were hardly visible, though
as numerous as herrings swimming in a shoal. Notwithstanding the
primitive aspect of the Gothic front, Monsieur Guillaume, of all the
merchant clothiers in Paris, was the one whose stores were always the
best provided, whose connections were the most extensive, and whose
commercial honesty never lay under the slightest suspicion. If some of
his brethren in business made a contract with the Government, and had
not the required quantity of cloth, he was always ready to deliver it,
however large the number of pieces tendered for. The wily dealer knew
a thousand ways of extracting the largest profits without being
obliged, like them, to court patrons, cringing to them, or making them
costly presents. When his fellow-tradesmen could only pay in good
bills of long date, he would mention his notary as an accommodating
man, and managed to get a second profit out of the bargain, thanks to
this arrangement, which had made it a proverb among the traders of the
Rue Saint-Denis: "Heaven preserve you from Monsieur Guillaume's
notary!" to signify a heavy discount.

The old merchant was to be seen standing on the threshold of his shop,
as if by a miracle, the instant the servant withdrew. Monsieur
Guillaume looked at the Rue Saint-Denis, at the neighboring shops, and
at the weather, like a man disembarking at Havre, and seeing France
once more after a long voyage. Having convinced himself that nothing
had changed while he was asleep, he presently perceived the stranger
on guard, and he, on his part, gazed at the patriarchal draper as
Humboldt may have scrutinized the first electric eel he saw in
America. Monsieur Guillaume wore loose black velvet breeches,
pepper-and-salt stockings, and square toed shoes with silver buckles.
His coat, with square-cut fronts, square-cut tails, and square-cut
collar clothed his slightly bent figure in greenish cloth, finished with
white metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately
combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a
furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been pierced
with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the
place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many
horizontal lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless
face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of wily
cupidity which is needful in business. At that time these old families
were less rare than they are now, in which the characteristic habits
and costume of their calling, surviving in the midst of more recent
civilization, were preserved as cherished traditions, like the
antediluvian remains found by Cuvier in the quarries.

The head of the Guillaume family was a notable upholder of ancient
practices; he might be heard to regret the Provost of Merchants, and
never did he mention a decision of the Tribunal of Commerce without
calling it the _Sentence of the Consuls_. Up and dressed the first of
the household, in obedience, no doubt, to these old customs, he stood
sternly awaiting the appearance of his three assistants, ready to
scold them in case they were late. These young disciples of Mercury
knew nothing more terrible than the wordless assiduity with which the
master scrutinized their faces and their movements on Monday in search
of evidence or traces of their pranks. But at this moment the old
clothier paid no heed to his apprentices; he was absorbed in trying to
divine the motive of the anxious looks which the young man in silk
stockings and a cloak cast alternately at his signboard and into the
depths of his shop. The daylight was now brighter, and enabled the
stranger to discern the cashier's corner enclosed by a railing and
screened by old green silk curtains, where were kept the immense
ledgers, the silent oracles of the house. The too inquisitive gazer
seemed to covet this little nook, and to be taking the plan of a
dining-room at one side, lighted by a skylight, whence the family at
meals could easily see the smallest incident that might occur at the
shop-door. So much affection for his dwelling seemed suspicious to a
trader who had lived long enough to remember the law of maximum
prices; Monsieur Guillaume naturally thought that this sinister
personage had an eye to the till of the Cat and Racket. After quietly
observing the mute duel which was going on between his master and the
stranger, the eldest of the apprentices, having seen that the young
man was stealthily watching the windows of the third floor, ventured
to place himself on the stone flag where Monsieur Guillaume was
standing. He took two steps out into the street, raised his head, and
fancied that he caught sight of Mademoiselle Augustine Guillaume in
hasty retreat. The draper, annoyed by his assistant's perspicacity,
shot a side glance at him; but the draper and his amorous apprentice
were suddenly relieved from the fears which the young man's presence
had excited in their minds. He hailed a hackney cab on its way to a
neighboring stand, and jumped into it with an air of affected
indifference. This departure was a balm to the hearts of the other two
lads, who had been somewhat uneasy as to meeting the victim of their
practical joke.

"Well, gentlemen, what ails you that you are standing there with your
arms folded?" said Monsieur Guillaume to his three neophytes. "In
former days, bless you, when I was in Master Chevrel's service, I
should have overhauled more than two pieces of cloth by this time."

"Then it was daylight earlier," said the second assistant, whose duty
this was.

The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two of these young
fellows, who were confided to his care by their fathers, rich
manufacturers at Louviers and at Sedan, had only to ask and to have a
hundred thousand francs the day when they were old enough to settle in
life, Guillaume regarded it as his duty to keep them under the rod of
an old-world despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern shops,
where the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. He made them
work like Negroes. These three assistants were equal to a business
which would harry ten such clerks as those whose sybaritical tastes
now swell the columns of the budget. Not a sound disturbed the peace
of this solemn house, where the hinges were always oiled, and where
the meanest article of furniture showed the respectable cleanliness
which reveals strict order and economy. The most waggish of the three
youths often amused himself by writing the date of its first
appearance on the Gruyere cheese which was left to their tender
mercies at breakfast, and which it was their pleasure to leave
untouched. This bit of mischief, and a few others of the same stamp,
would sometimes bring a smile on the face of the younger of
Guillaume's daughters, the pretty maiden who has just now appeared to
the bewitched man in the street.

Though each of these apprentices, even the eldest, paid a round sum
for his board, not one of them would have been bold enough to remain
at the master's table when dessert was served. When Madame Guillaume
talked of dressing the salad, the hapless youths trembled as they
thought of the thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil.
They could never think of spending a night away from the house without
having given, long before, a plausible reason for such an
irregularity. Every Sunday, each in his turn, two of them accompanied
the Guillaume family to Mass at Saint-Leu, and to vespers.
Mesdemoiselles Virginie and Augustine, simply attired in cotton print,
each took the arm of an apprentice and walked in front, under the
piercing eye of their mother, who closed the little family procession
with her husband, accustomed by her to carry two large prayer-books,
bound in black morocco. The second apprentice received no salary. As
for the eldest, whose twelve years of perseverance and discretion had
initiated him into the secrets of the house, he was paid eight hundred
francs a year as the reward of his labors. On certain family festivals
he received as a gratuity some little gift, to which Madame
Guillaume's dry and wrinkled hand alone gave value--netted purses,
which she took care to stuff with cotton wool, to show off the fancy
stitches, braces of the strongest make, or heavy silk stockings.
Sometimes, but rarely, this prime minister was admitted to share the
pleasures of the family when they went into the country, or when,
after waiting for months, they made up their mind to exert the right
acquired by taking a box at the theatre to command a piece which Paris
had already forgotten.

As to the other assistants, the barrier of respect which formerly
divided a master draper from his apprentices was that they would have
been more likely to steal a piece of cloth than to infringe this
time-honored etiquette. Such reserve may now appear ridiculous; but
these old houses were a school of honesty and sound morals. The
masters adopted their apprentices. The young man's linen was cared
for, mended, and often replaced by the mistress of the house. If an
apprentice fell ill, he was the object of truly maternal attention. In
a case of danger the master lavished his money in calling in the most
celebrated physicians, for he was not answerable to their parents
merely for the good conduct and training of the lads. If one of them,
whose character was unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old
tradesmen knew how to value the intelligence he had displayed, and
they did not hesitate to entrust the happiness of their daughters to
men whom they had long trusted with their fortunes. Guillaume was one
of these men of the old school, and if he had their ridiculous side,
he had all their good qualities; and Joseph Lebas, the chief
assistant, an orphan without any fortune, was in his mind destined to
be the husband of Virginie, his elder daughter. But Joseph did not
share the symmetrical ideas of his master, who would not for an empire
have given his second daughter in marriage before the elder. The
unhappy assistant felt that his heart was wholly given to Mademoiselle
Augustine, the younger. In order to justify this passion, which had
grown up in secret, it is necessary to inquire a little further into
the springs of the absolute government which ruled the old
cloth-merchant's household.

Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle Virginie, was the
very image of her mother. Madame Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur
Chevrel, sat so upright in the stool behind her desk, that more than
once she had heard some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her
long, thin face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or
of amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated her head--that
of a woman near on sixty--with a cap of a particular and unvarying
shape, with long lappets, like that of a widow. In all the
neighborhood she was known as the "portress nun." Her speech was curt,
and her movements had the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye,
with a gleam in it like a cat's, seemed to spite the world because she
was so ugly. Mademoiselle Virginie, brought up, like her younger
sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, had reached the age of
eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated the graceless effect which her
likeness to her mother sometimes gave to her features, but maternal
austerity had endowed her with two great qualities which made up for
everything. She was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle Augustine, who
was but just eighteen, was not like either her father or her mother.
She was one of those daughters whose total absence of any physical
affinity with their parents makes one believe in the adage: "God gives
children." Augustine was little, or, to describe her more truly,
delicately made. Full of gracious candor, a man of the world could
have found no fault in the charming girl beyond a certain meanness of
gesture or vulgarity of attitude, and sometimes a want of ease. Her
silent and placid face was full of the transient melancholy which
comes over all young girls who are too weak to dare to resist their
mother's will.

The two sisters, always plainly dressed, could not gratify the innate
vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanliness which became them
wonderfully, and made them harmonize with the polished counters and
the shining shelves, on which the old man-servant never left a speck
of dust, and with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them.
As their style of living compelled them to find the elements of
happiness in persistent work, Augustine and Virginie had hitherto
always satisfied their mother, who secretly prided herself on the
perfect characters of her two daughters. It is easy to imagine the
results of the training they had received. Brought up to a commercial
life, accustomed to hear nothing but dreary arguments and calculations
about trade, having studied nothing but grammar, book-keeping, a
little Bible-history, and the history of France in Le Ragois, and
never reading any book but what their mother would sanction, their
ideas had not acquired much scope. They knew perfectly how to keep
house; they were familiar with the prices of things; they understood
the difficulty of amassing money; they were economical, and had a
great respect for the qualities that make a man of business. Although
their father was rich, they were as skilled in darning as in
embroidery; their mother often talked of having them taught to cook,
so that they might know how to order a dinner and scold a cook with
due knowledge. They knew nothing of the pleasures of the world; and,
seeing how their parents spent their exemplary lives, they very rarely
suffered their eyes to wander beyond the walls of their hereditary
home, which to their mother was the whole universe. The meetings to
which family anniversaries gave rise filled in the future of earthly
joy to them.

When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to be prepared to
receive company--Madame Roguin, a Demoiselle Chevrel, fifteen months
younger than her cousin, and bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin,
employed in the Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich
perfumer, and his wife, known as Madame Cesar; Monsieur Camusot, the
richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his
father-in-law, Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, and some
immaculate ladies--the arrangements, made necessary by the way in
which everything was packed away--the plate, the Dresden china, the
candlesticks, and the glass--made a variety in the monotonous lives of
the three women, who came and went and exerted themselves as nuns
would to receive their bishop. Then, in the evening, when all three
were tired out with having wiped, rubbed, unpacked, and arranged all
the gauds of the festival, as the girls helped their mother to
undress, Madame Guillaume would say to them, "Children, we have done
nothing today."