Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/90

 

XI

CHARLES LÉANDRE

EANDRE must be a terror to the members of the official classes in Paris, for they must live from day to day in mortal fear lest they shall have fallen a prey to his deft pencil. He must ever persuade them of their own irresistible comicality, and thereafter they must always feel more like Léandre's caricatures than like themselves, and must inevitably act likewise.

Léandre not only caricatures the faces and figures of his subjects, but he caricatures their mien and manners; their politeness, their self-satisfaction, their hauteur, their cringing, in his hands exudes from every pore,

Yet he is not cruel, he does not lead us to hate his originals; he makes us enjoy them, and laugh good naturedly at and with them. He shows us their unmistakable features, as though seen throuzh a distorting but discriminating mirror. We can