Yet he is not cruel, he does not lead us to hate his originals; he makes us enjoy them, and laugh good naturedly at and with them. He shows us their unmistakable features, as though seen through a distorting but discriminating mirror. We can well imagine one of his victims, impressed with the undeniable truth of Léandre’s portrait of himself, shunning daylight altogether, after the publication thereof; and refusing to walk abroad carrying those weasel eyes and that terrible nose, which previously he had flaunted on the boulevards with such evident pride. Indeed, a dose of Léandre might well be prescribed as a cure for swollen head. [Illustration: A. WILLETTE MA CHANDELLE EST MORTE] It must not be imagined from the foregoing that portrait caricature alone occupies the pencil of our artist. His book of subtle wash drawings entitled “Nocturnes,” and the lively pages of _Le Rire_, _L’Album_, _L’Assiette au Beurre_, and other journals are embellished with his cartoons and comic drawings, covering a fairly wide range of subjects. He is moreover a serious portrait-painter of great feeling and delicacy. We may look on him almost as an _animalier_, or natural history artist making a speciality of that droll, brainy, beast--man, recording all his different varieties, and watching his every gesture and movement. In his cartoons he occasionally approaches the somewhat nervous style of Willette, whom we incline to think time may prove to have been an overrated artist. The stronger method of Léandre, however, is particularly noticed in such drawings as _Le Ministère en Vacances_ and _Le Retour du Général Duchesne_ in _Le Rire_; and here we may mention how much many of the most excellent of the younger artists--such as Steinlen, Léandre, Malteste, Redon, Sabattier, Tilly, and Huard in France, Lockhart-Bogle, Hartrick, Almond and Gunning King in England, evidently owe to that giant among draughtsmen--Paul Renouard. [Illustration] Léandre was born at Champsecret, Orne. It is easy to trace the influence that a course of modelling in plaster under the decorator Bin, which he attended after leaving college and arriving in Paris, impressed on his work, for all his heads have a strong sculpturesque feeling about them. Later he became a pupil of Cabanel at the Beaux Arts School; and we, who know the ways of Paris art students, can well imagine the uproarious series of “_charges_” or caricatures, he must have painted of his fellow students, and possibly of his professor. For it is certain that later on he handled the _gens sérieux_, with whom he was brought into contact at the _reunions_ given by his uncle--the Deputy Christofle, with but scant regard for their dignity.