I Like Bald Soups

A man sitting in front of his dinner at a restaurant table delicately pulls a long hair out of his mouth with a disgusted grimace. The caption and its fictitious attribution to Victor Hugo are a humorous reference to a scene from Notre-Dame de Paris, in which Jehan Frollo, in similar circumstances, shouts to the innkeeper: “D’ye hear, devil’s cook, I like bald omelets.”

This illustration was published in Le Charivari on October 15, 1840. It is the second lithograph in a series of eight titled Silhouettes. Second state of three.

The caption reads in the original French: ‘Holà, hé ! madame l’hôtesse, j’aime les potages chauves.’ (Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris.)