The frontispiece (plate 4), a round composition in which a devil carrying a great scroll hovers against a lurid sky over the Gothic gateway of the Palais de Justice, is a sinister design. The Tomb of Molière (plate 23), tail-piece to the set, was etched on the same plate, and a proof exists from the undivided copper containing both designs. The verses following the frontispiece are a comment on the latter, and express Meryon’s conviction that the city of Paris, “Paris le Paradis des amours et des Ris,” is possessed by a “noir Diabloton, malicieux, mutin,” fostered by science, and that this “méchant animal, Origine du mal” cannot be exorcised without razing the city to the ground. These etched verses are very rare. The symbolical coat of arms of the city of Paris (plate 5) is another of the minor pieces inserted in 1854, when the set was being completed. Then follows _Le Stryge_ (plate 6), etched in 1853, one of the most original and impressive of all Meryon’s etchings. His elbows propped on the ledge of the balcony, one of the Gothic monsters of the western towers of Notre-Dame broods with head in hands and lolling tongue, an enigmatical and evil expression in his eye, over the city of Paris seen far below, with the Tour St. Jacques as the most prominent object. Jackdaws circle in the air about the towers, and graven beneath the oval, in one state only of the plate, is the sinister couplet:-- Insatiable vampire, l’éternelle luxure Sur la grande cité convoite sa pâture.