Germany: "Farewell, Madame, and if—"
"Ha! We shall meet again!"
The statesmen and warriors of that period were very happily caricatured in a series of cartoons, most of which appeared in L'Éclipse. Gill excelled in his caricature of individual men rather than in the caricature of events or groups. His real name was Louis Alexandre Gosset. He was born at Landouzy-li-Ville, October 19, 1840, and died in Paris, December 29, 1885. Thiers, Gambetta, Louis Blanc, all the men of the time, were hit off by his pencil. His method in most cases consisted of the grotesque exaggeration of the subject's head at the expense of the body. He was especially happy in his caricature of Thiers, whose diminutive size, as well as his great importance, made him a favorite subject for the cartoonist. Thiers as Hamlet soliloquizing, "To be or not to be"; Thiers as "The Man Who Laughs"; the head of Thiers peering over the rim of a glass, "A tempest in a glass of water"; Thiers as the first conscript of France; Thiers as Achilles in retreat—all these and countless others are from the pencil of Gill.
Bismarck the First.
Trochu—1870.
A striking satirical sketch by Hadol, entitled "La Parade," sums up all the buffooneries of the Second Empire. In it the Duc de Morny as the barking showman is violently inviting the populace to enter and inspect the wonders of the Théâtre Badinguet. Badinguet, as said before, was the name of the workman in whose clothes Louis Napoleon was said to have escaped from his imprisonment at Ham; and throughout the Second Empire it was the name by which the Parisians maliciously alluded to the Emperor. Behind De Morny in the cartoon are the Emperor and Empress, seated at the cashier's desk at the entrance of the theater to take in the money of the dupes whom De Morny can persuade to enter. To the right and left, in grotesque attire, are the actors of the show, representing the various statesmen and soldiers whose names were connected with the reign.