Page:Lords of the Housetops (1921).pdf/17

 able to find an English translation of it. The story, the original title of which is Peines de cœur d'une chatte anglaise, first appeared in a volume of satires called Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, issued by Hetzel in Paris in 1846, and to which George Sand, Alfred de Musset, and others contributed. The main purpose of the collaboration was doubtless to furnish a text to the extraordinary drawings of Grandville, who had an uncanny talent for merging human and animal characteristics. The volume was translated into English by J. Thompson and published in London in 1877, but for obvious reasons The Afflictions of an English Cat was not included in the translation, although Balzac's name would have added lustre to the collection. But in the Victorian age such a rough satire would scarcely have been tolerated. Even in French the story is not easily accessible. Aside from its original setting I have found it in but one edition of Balzac, the Œuvres Complètes issued in de luxe form by Calmann-Levy in 1879, where it is buried in the twenty-first volume, Œuvres Diverses.

Therefore I make no excuse for translating and offering it to my readers, for although perhaps it was not intended for a picture of cat life, the observation on the whole is true enough, and the story itself is too delicious to pass by. I should state that the opening and closing paragraphs refer to earlier chapters in the Vie privée et publique des animaux. I have, I may add, omitted one or two brief passages out of consideration for what is called American taste.

April 6, 1920. New York.