Ten droll tales being the story of the fair Imperia, the venial sin, the merrie diversions of his most christian majesty king Louis the eleventh, together with certain others quaint and piquant histories making up the first decade of the Droll tales of master Honoré de Balzac, rendered faithfully into English by J. Lewis May, with an introduction by André Maurois and illustrations by Jean De Bosschère.

4to; front. and 23 plates.

Publisher's binding: orange pictorial cloth, boards decorated in gilt and with blind frames with tools in the angles, flat spine ornamented in gilt.

Illustrated with 24 plates by De Bosschère, of which 16 in colour protected by tissue guards. Issue strictly limited to 3.000 copies for sale (n° 2.495). Provenance: Rudolf K. Kommer (Czernowitz 1886-1943 Manatthan), journalist and impresario of Max Reinhardt for a long time. He translated several American plays in German. The FBI led an investigation against him to discover if he was a double agent for the Nazis (ms. note from New York, May, 1933).