*Les Missionnaires*

A friar rides into town on a donkey, one hand thrown up in mid-sermon, a heavy wooden cross bumping at his side. A second cleric leads the beast by a string of beads; behind them presses a crowd of cowled figures and a banner. Grandville cut this to illustrate a song by Béranger, the popular songwriter whose gentle mockery of church and crown made him a hero of the July Monarchy. The wood engraving is built for the printed page, its blacks dense enough to survive a fast press run in an ordinary book. Grandville reads faces like a caricaturist even here, the preacher smug, the led donkey long-suffering, the followers a blur of piety. This is illustration doing an editorial cartoon's job, a picture that argues while it entertains.