Barbarism and the Cholera invading Europe in 1831.
Raid on the Workshop of the Liberty of the Press.
CHAPTER X
MAYEUX AND ROBERT MACAIRE
A peculiar feature of French caricature, especially after political subjects were largely forbidden, was the creation of certain famous types who soon became familiar to the French public, and whose reappearances from day to day in new and ever grotesque situations were hailed with growing delight. Such were the Mayeux of Traviès and the Macaire and Bertrand of Daumier, who in course of time became as celebrated, in a certain sense, as the heroes of "The Three Musketeers." In his "Curiosités Esthétiques" Beaudelaire has told the story of the origin of Mayeux. "There was," he says, "in Paris a sort of clown named Le Claire, who had the run of various low resorts and theaters. His specialty was to make têtes d'expression, that is, by a series of facial contortions he would express successively the various human passions. This man, a clown by nature, was very melancholy and possessed with a mad desire for friendship. All the time not occupied in practice and in giving his grotesque performances he spent in searching for a friend, and when he had been drinking, tears of solitude flowed freely from his eyes. Traviès saw him. It was a time when the great patriotic enthusiasm of July was still at its height. A luminous idea entered his brain. Mayeux was created, and for a long time afterward this same turbulent Mayeux talked, screamed, harangued, and gesticulated in the memory of the people of Paris."
Traviès's "Mayeux."
"Adam destroyed us by the apple; Lafayette by the pear."