Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/27



fearing, the uncanny stranger — just as they did the chained bear that passed through a week before.

Less gruesome is a great healthy farmer's lass, surrounded by cocks and hens and clattering her wooden shoes across the cobbled farmyard; or the two fresh little laundry girls, swinging along laden with three great baskets of clean linen. "Look out! there's another of those beastly bicycles," says one of them; "and on Sunday too," comments the other,

'Then again there are idyllic scenes on the sordid Paris fortifications, or yet further afield. Trompe la Mort shows us a crowd of humble folk scandal-mongering in hushed tones, their tittle-tattle provoked to its utmost by the climax indicated in the background by a sombre hearse. Another drawing transports us to the midst of a crowd in quite a different frame of mind, A hue and cry has been raised, and an infuriated mob is tearing down the street at the heels of its hapless prey. Next we see one of the many drawings dealing with a side of life which in less safe hands might be offensive. An unctuous old harpy waylays two fresh little workgirls, and insidiously lays the seeds which, to her profit, shall lead to their downfall. Steinlen occasionally, if rarely, makes drawings of which humour is the motive power. Among these I recall a café-concert study of his. Yvette Guilbert, at that time as thin as a lath, holds the stage, and among the audience is a great, porpoise-like woman who says,