Among the best caricatures of the siege-days was one by Daumier, which
showed Death appearing to Bismarck in his sleep, and murmuring softly,
"Thanks, many thanks." Another idea of the period found expression in a
cartoon representing a large mouse-trap, labelled "France," into which a
company of mice dressed up as German soldiers were eagerly marching, their
officer meanwhile pointing to a cheese fixed inside the trap, and
inscribed with the name of Paris. Below the design ran the legend: "Ah! if
we could only catch them all in it!" Many, indeed most, of the caricatures
of the time did not appear in the so-called humorous journals, but were
issued separately at a penny apiece, and were usually coloured by the
stencilling process. In one of them, I remember, Bismarck was seen wearing
seven-league boots and making ineffectual attempts to step from Versailles
to Paris. Another depicted the King of Prussia as Butcher William, knife
in hand and attired in the orthodox slaughter-house costume; whilst in yet
another design the same monarch was shown urging poor Death, who had
fallen exhausted in the snow, with his scythe lying broken beside him, to
continue on the march until the last of the French nation should be
exterminated.
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