Sont-ils bêtes! Suivre c'te femme là! s'ils la connaissaient comme moi!

A pen-and-ink sketch cartoon, likely rendered for wood-engraving reproduction in a French illustrated periodical, shows a line of male figures hurrying after a woman along a seaside promenade while a smug observer—labeled Baigneur assidu (the regular bather)—watches with contempt. The caption, in working-class register, reads: 'Aren't they idiots! Following that woman there—if only they knew her as I do!' The joke trades on male sexual vanity and resort-town social comedy. Artist Cham (Amédée de Noé) was Daumier's great contemporary at Le Charivari, working squarely within the Gavarni–Daumier tradition of bourgeois-manners caricature that itself descended from Rowlandson's social sketches. These single-image gag drawings, published serially, are direct ancestors of the comic strip panel.