*Les Lorettes*, No. 44

A young woman in a loose morning gown flings up an arm and dances, singing nonsense, a trilled la-la-la. Beside her an older woman in a dark bonnet sits stiff and sour, working at something in her lap. The printed exchange underneath supplies the sting: the older one presses money, the rent, the need to think of solid things, and the girl answers every warning with the same singsong. Gavarni chronicled the lorettes, the young Parisiennes who lived off admirers, with an eye that was amused rather than moralizing. His line is soft, social, observational, closer to a novelist's than a firebrand's. In Philipon's Le Charivari his weekly types ran beside Daumier's, and the pairing defined the illustrated paper, gentle manners-comedy and political attack sold to the same readers each week.