In December 1998, the depression started and has refused to leave me ever since

Caricaturana 50: Abuse of article 214 of the civil code: My lady wife, you leave me without anything, you only give me a miserable annuity of three thousand quid, you leave me at your door like a beggar, and furthermore, you want to distance me from Paris, to expatriate me, to deport me!... No,no, I shall not leave Frrrrrance!.. No,no!!... Listen. I owe 10,000 f[rancs] to my friend Bertrand, it's a gentleman debt, I owe the keeper of the cheap eating house 525 and ten francs to my lodging house, total 10,535 f[rancs]; give me a few thousand francs more to distract me from my domestic sorrows and I'll leave you in peace, word of honour!

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

SKETCHES OF WINTER 2: Going to sample what it is convenient to call, even in the month of December, the pleasures of the hunt!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

TENANTS AND LANDLORDS 12: Robber of a landlord... who doesn't want to have repairs done for me except in fine weather!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

SKETCHES OF SUMMER 40: －Sir, would you be kind enough to tell me when you'ld like to pay me back the five hundred francs you've been owing me for a long time... －My dear man, you're unreasonable to make such a request of me, you clearly see that I have nothing on me at this very moment..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

Strangers in Paris 4: Some slight purchases: Oh!...the beautiful shawls... would you buy me one, dear?... －What!... why didn't you say straightaway that you wanted everything, and we could have started by simply buying up the whole la Ville de Paris shop!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

PARISIANS TYPES 26: Yes, Sir, your respectable air encourages me: you see in me a first tenor who has lost his DO, but who still has his wife. With eighteen children, and nothing more! nooo... thing mmmm... ore; lend me fifteen pounds or so! －I've only got a forty franc piece on me! －I'll give it back to you!

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

JOURNEY TO CHINA 9: A CHINESE DANCE.One is greatly mistaken if one believes the Chinese people to be giddy, joyful and the friend of pleasure: they are on the contrary serious and morose, since their greatest amusement consists in a type of lugubrious walking in which the men and women walk one in front of the other, or one beside the other, and seem to be saying among themselves: brother we should die! In order also to point to the philosophical intention behind this ceremony, the opposite of dancing, they call it: Counter-dancing

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

NEWS 184: AN UNLUCKY FIGHTER: See, here, my friend Léon, gulp this down for me... it's Argenteuil balsam...it's worked every time one of my men has been unwise enough to separate from my gang and has got a frightful beating up!...another time, don't go out alone against the majority!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

PARISIAN SKETCHES 3: － Yes, my dear mister Coffignon, it would be difficult for me to count up the number of my conquests I've always had and today still have great success with women! － To be sure [,] as for me [,] I've only ever had mine [my woman] and I still find that it's too much!

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

Parisian Freebooters 12: The Crocodile: This has to do with a variety of species of Crocodile, which was known to the ancients under the name of Tantalus and which a Gymnasium naturalist of our time has called the Gastronome without money. This voracious whale-like creature is most commonly found in the localities of Merchants of Eatables. His teeth are pointed and very long from lack of exercise, since he uses only his eyes to devour. When he has had the perseverance to remain for a whole day static in front of his prey he sometimes ends up by having the luck to catch... a crick in the neck. He feeds himself only on desires and vain hopes, he is also remarkably thin. Very different from other fish of his species that swim in open water, this type of Crocodile is always in the dry

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

ROBERT MACAIRE. 2nd Series 17: Man in naluratibus [sic]. Philosophy, my dear Bertrand, explains very well our two characters from our physiques... you are weakness, I am strength... to you is cunning, to me courage... you are the ivy and I the oak, without me the slightest breeze from the police will plunge you into a torrent of misfortune... do not leave me and inscribe upon your arms: I die or I cling

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

NAUTICAL IMPRESSIONS. NAUTICAL THRILLS: Mr. PRUDHOMME. －What..., impudent waves!... do you indeed not know whom you are carrying at this moment, since you are so bold towards me?... understand that, like Xerxes, I am able to have you lashed!... Mrs. PRUDHOMME (Trembling all over) －Oh!... my dear... I beg you!... don't be impertinent to it, you'll put it in a rage and it's capable of swallowing us up!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

Caricaturana 38: Lively! Lively! Bertrand, got to push the merchandise onto the market, beat the big drum, make a show, attract the sucker's attention! Lively! Lively! We'll attack ourselves in the newspapers, write to ourselves, reply to ourselves, answer ourselves, insult ourselves, and above all, advertise ourselves... －do you think the public won't have the key to these shams? －Leave off, everybody has the key to them except the public

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

JOURNEY TO CHINA 17: THE PENAL CODE. The Chinese legislators have decreed that all the accused will answer a summons freely in front of their judges, and so they are brought before the examining magistrate between two policemen and bound with handcuffs, which in fact leaves them no more liberty than to sneeze. Moreover justice is delivered with such promptness in the Celestial Empire that it is very rare for he who has been cautioned to remain more than eight months before attending his trial, finally the solemn day arrives when he sees himself sentenced to a fortnight in prison, and the capped mandarin has the goodness to explain to him that this fortnight is not to be confused with the eight months he has already spent behind bolted doors

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

THE TEMPTATION OF THE NEW St. ANTHONY: In that particular time, a great and fat sinner named Véron felt himself touched by grace: having reflected that the Press was a priesthood, he became a hermit and retired to a wild place in the midst of the steepest mountains of Montmartre. There, he spent his days and nights in prayer, and as a means of mortification, imposed upon himself as a penitence the continual re-reading of the list of subscribers to the Constitutionnel. －For his only food, Véron took at long intervals a light fragment of Regnauld pâté. －The Devil, irritated by this edifying yet unexpected conversion employed different strategies to make St. Véron succumb to his temptations, but our noble coenobite knew how to resist those things which until recently had held so many charms for him: Satan, who had taken the form of the Constitutionnel in order come in person to tempt St. Véron, returned to the road for Paris, furious. －The anchorite of Montmartre has, since this time, been placed in the rank of the greatest saints which Parisian journalism honours, and is especially supplicated by the unfortunates who have a head cold

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

TENANTS AND LANDLOADS 5: －Why, madam..., I am unwise enough to absent myself from my property for some months and this is the state in which I find you... I give you twenty four hours' notice to leave... I don't even know that I don't have the right to claim damages from your husband!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

BOHEMIANS OF PARIS 15: THE OLD ROUÉE: So I'm going to be a door-keeper in the rue du Mont-Blanc in a large house where my husband says they'll call us porters. So I'm going to leave this ramshackle place where there're only four tenants who give me five sous apiece for a New Year's present... Scum!!!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

NEWS 27: －Yes, Mrs.Chaboulard, there're twenty four grocers who've joined together and taken the oath to murder president Dupin. －The horror of it!... but also why doesn't the government watch the grocers better... I said it a long time ago, all grocers are scoundrels!... and to prove it, yesterday mine sold me mustard for two sous and he only gave me six liards' worth... I'm going to denounce him, he'll be one of the twenty four!..

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

TRIVIAL THINGS 7: －Come to dinner, my wife dines in town: we will be fellows together. －Ah,deuce,I have a migraine! (aside) and his wife who is waiting for me at home!

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

ROBERT MACAIRE. 2nd Series 3: Yes, Sir, you see in me a victim of political hatreds... an outcast... I have been condemned Falsely and I have had to go into exile... I'm clearing off to Belgium in order to reach Spain where I count on taking up arms... (aside) if I can't take anything else

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

Ancient History 13: The rape of Helen. Paris,whom by love was seized up to the teeth, / Was hardly fit to smoke a cigar. / Helen knew this, and without giving warning,/ Carried Paris away in her sturdy arms (Aeneid)

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

NEWS 200: A VISIT TO THE CONVICT-PRISON IN NAPLES: Mr.Gladstone－ And what do you call this man? he doesn't look like a villain. The Gaolor－ Don't you believe any of it, on the contrary,he's a demagogue, an old constitutional minister of 1848 called Carlo Poërio. In his inexhaustible clemency the best and most worthy of kings ordered that we chain him to an assassin, so that he might return to the good. He'd have been completely lost if we'd left him with another demagogue

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

JOURNEY TO CHINA 1: THE DISEMBARKATION. Each traveller who lands at a port in China is immediately conducted, like a wrong-doer, between two rows of inquisitive people to the passport office: hardly has he touched the soil of the Celestial Empire, than he becomes the prey of luggage-porters, hotel-boys, interpreters, messengers and other highwaymen authorised by the Chinese police

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan

JOURNEY TO CHINA 7: CHINESE MARRIAGE. The angler's skill in setting his lines, the hunter's artfulness in taking game, the horse-dealer's tricks to hide the redhibitory defects of his horse, nothing is comparable to the skill, the artfulness, the trick which a mother deploys in order to marry her daughter... the poor Chinese men mistrust the lures, of honey and of glue, to no avail, someone always falls into the maternal snare

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan