At the Sign of the Cat Racket | Page 4

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