pear lying like a nightmare (Alf) on the breast of the slumbering Lafayette, who, as we see in writing on the wall, is dreaming of the best republic. And we may also behold Perier and Sebastiani, the former clad as Pierrot, the latter as a tri-coloured harlequin, wading through the deepest mud, bearing on their shoulders a staff from which hangs an immense pear. The young Henri appears as a pious pilgrim with cockle-shelled hat and staff, on which hangs a pear as if it were a decapitated head.[1]
I do not in very truth defend the indecency of these wretched caricatures, least of all when they attack the person of the Prince; but their incessant multitude is a popular voice,[2] and it means something. Such pictures are in a way pardonable when, without intending to offend the individual, they censure a deception by which the people have been duped. Then the effect is without limit. Since a caricature appeared in which a tri-coloured parrot replies continually to every question, "Valmy" or "Jemappes," Louis
- ↑ I have not seen the original of this picture, but I think it more likely that as a pear is exactly of the same shape as a gourd, from which pilgrims' bottles were commonly made (I have such a gourd before me as I write), this was the motive here referred to.—Translator.
- ↑ French version—"Mais leur foule incessante est peut-être une voix du peuple."
