Page:The Etchings of Charles Meryon.djvu/24

 they include La Rue des Mauvais Garçons (plate 10), a plate to which posterity attaches a high value, if Meryon did not do so himself. Some of the minor etchings are so extremely rare that they must have been printed in small numbers and not generally included in the "cahier." Several rather important etchings of Paris were done at a later date, and did not form part of the "Eaux-Fortes sur Paris" set.

The dedication to Zeeman, "peintre des matelots" (plate 3), is in verses which express in simple language Meryon's love and admiration for the master who had inspired his early efforts, concluding with the words:—

Mon maître et matelot, Renier toi que j'aime Comme un autre moi-même A revoir, à bientôt.

The frontispiece (plate 4), a round composition in which a devil carrying a great scroll hovers against a lurid sky over the Gothic gateway of the Palais de Justice, is a sinister design. The Tomb of Molière (plate 23), tail-piece to the set, was etched on the same plate, and a proof exists from the undivided copper containing both designs. The verses following the frontispiece are a comment on the latter, and express Meryon's conviction that the city of Paris, "Paris le Paradis des amours et des Ris," is possessed by a "noir Diabloton, malicieux, mutin," fostered by science, and that this "méchant animal, Origine du mal" cannot be exorcised without razing the city to the ground. These etched verses are very rare. The symbolical coat of arms of the city of Paris (plate 5) is another of the minor pieces inserted in 1854, when the set was being completed. Then follows Le Stryge (plate 6), etched in 1853, one of the most original and impressive of all Meryon's etchings. His elbows propped on the ledge of the balcony, one of the Gothic monsters of the western towers of Notre-Dame broods with head in hands and lolling tongue, an enigmatical and evil expression in his eye, over the city of Paris seen far below, with the Tour St. Jacques as the most