The New Year brings New Hope for France.
By Daumier in "Charivari."
"The Root of all Evil."
From the "Fliegende Blätter" in 1871.
Almost as Germanic in sentiment and in execution as the "Maid of Orleans" series in the Fliegende Blätter was the curious little volume entitled "The Fight at Dame Europa's School," written and illustrated by Thomas Nast. This skit, which was printed in New York after the close of the War, contained thirty-three drawings which are remarkable chiefly in that they are comparatively different from anything else that Nast ever did and bear a striking resemblance to the war cartoons of the German papers. The Louis Napoleon of this book is so much like the Louis Napoleon of the Fliegende Blätter that one is bound to feel that one was the direct inspiration of the other. The text of the book, though nothing astonishing, serves its purpose in elucidating the drawings. It tells of the well-ordered educational establishment kept by Dame Europa in which the five largest boys acted as monitors, to keep the unruly pupils in order. These boys were Louis, William, Aleck, Joseph, and John. If a dispute arose among any of the smaller boys, the monitors had to examine into its cause, and, if possible, to settle it amicably. Should it be necessary to fight the matter out, they were to see fair play, stop the encounter when it had gone far enough, and at all times to uphold justice, and to prevent tyranny and bullying. In this work Master Louis and Master John were particularly prominent. There was a tradition in the school of a terrific row in times past, when a monitor named Nicholas attacked a very dirty little boy called Constantine. John and Louis pitched in, and gave Nicholas such a thrashing that he never got over it, and soon afterward left the school. Now each of the upper boys had a little garden of his own in which he took great pride and interest. In the center of each garden there was an arbor, fitted up according to the taste and means of its owner. Louis had the prettiest arbor of all, while that of John was a mere tool-house. When the latter wished to enjoy a holiday he would punt himself across the brook and enjoy himself in the arbor of his friend Louis. By the side of Louis's domain was that of William, who, though proud of his own garden, never went to work in it without casting an envious glance on two little flower beds which now belonged to Louis, but which ought by rights he thought to belong to him. Over these flower beds he often talked with his favorite fag, a shrewd lad named Mark, full of deep tricks and dodges.
The whole spirit of these pictures, which appeared in the Fliegende Blätter after the Napoleonic downfall in 1871, is a travesty on the splendid lines of Schiller in the "Maid of Orleans" (Jungfrau von Orleans).