Cute Little Couple
All Resolutions
Say, what a cute little couple! they go back home at daybreak, and peacefully so. The perfect match!... they'll knock down their cheap shot of brandy, sleep until noon, and there you go! that'll do for the week...
Description:
This illustration was taken from the series “Les débardeurs,” which offers various depictions of characters inspired by the crowd which could be met at the Paris popular dances and carnival parties in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The caption reads in the original French:
Un amour de petit ménage quoi ! ça se retire à la pointe du jour, bien paisibles ! bien unis !… ça va se mettre sous le nez son pauvre polichinelle[1] de quatre sous, dormir jusqu’à midi, et puis bonjour ! en voilà pour la semaine…
- ^ Émile Littré, in his dictionary, informs us that the word polichinelle used to refer, among other things, to a canon d’eau-de-vie, i.e. a shot of brandy. (Littré, Émile. Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris: L. Hachette, 1873-1874. Electronic version created by François Gannaz. https://www.littre.org)
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