This is an exquisite little deck, and I do mean little.  It contains 36 cards, none of which resemble any kind of playing deck I have seen before, except in size.  They are the size of a bridge deck, but there are no suits of any kind.  Instead, on each card there is a small illustration, and the artwork on these is relatively good, although details aren't great because of the size.  There is also a verse on it, which rhymes on mine in the English version, however the original verses are in French and a French copy of the deck is also available.

The deck purportedly is an exact replica of the deck used by Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Lenormand, who was a famous diviner in the French courts in the reign of Napoleon.  She apparently predicted a great many events with fabulous success and accuracy, and was renowned in her own time.

The very small thin pamphlet which comes with the deck gives extremely vague instructions, but from everything I can put together, the diviner using these cards shuffles them thoroughly, lays out all thirty-six cards, then turns them all over and interprets them in relation to where they lie.  The theory is that if you are reading for a man, you look for this one card which signifies the man in the reading, or the woman card for a female client, and then all the rest of the cards are interpreted according to how they lie in relation to that significating card.
It's a system which is heavily open to interpretation, and resembles more the parlour fortunetelling games and the gypsy methods of divination rather than anything even remotely related to Tarot. Still, for someone who is highly intuitive or psychic, this might prove to be an accurate method of divination, and certainly an entertaining form of it as well.

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Review Copyright 1998 by Gina M. Pace