*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.