It is not a book to be recommended from a moral point of view, but the typographical art, joined to that of designers and engravers, never obtained a more complete success: the size in octavo, the impression clear, united with the dimensions of the plates in a harmonious elegance, well calculated to please the three rich personages and the joyous amateurs to whom the _Contes_ address themselves. True, Eisen has dressed the greater part of the characters in the costume of his time, which is a little hurtful to one's feelings to-day; it may be imagined, however, that it was La Fontaine who was mistaken, so that these delicate, risky tales appear to be created for the seigneurs of the time of Louis XV. All the special literature sought for then by rich people had not the value of the _Contes_. There was at Rheims a person, who has to-day become the _mode_, as he was in the time of Louis XVI., who sold under cover a quantity of licentious books of the better kind, adorned with figures by Eisen, Marillier, or Cochin; this was Cazin, an artist in his way, but whose good name suffered under a scandalous trial. An order of the Council of State in 1764 enjoined him to cease his trade in the Place Royale at Rheims, where he sold his particular merchandise. It appears that the sentence was not without appeal, for we find Cazin at Paris about 1785. He was one of those who were ruined by the Revolution, after he had popularised the editions known as _Petits Formats_, printed by Valade, of Paris. [Illustration: Fig. 86.--Card of the publisher Prault, uncle by marriage of Moreau le Jeune.] We have come to the most beautiful illustrated books of the eighteenth century, and to the illustrious artists of whom we shall speak in good time should be added the younger Moreau and St. Aubin, the former nephew by marriage of the publisher Prault, and therefrom a decorator of the Book, the other thrown by Gravelot into full work, and rapidly becoming the most subtle and adroit of the etchers of the time. Moreau did not wait long after his marriage before setting to work. He began with ornaments destined for the _Histoire de France_ of President Henault; then he composed, in his own personal manner, titles and tailpieces for his uncle. In the Book he is the propagator of garlands of roses, which he grouped with an ideal grace; he twined them in the borders of his frontispieces, and put them judiciously in his tailpieces. He excelled in inventing subjects referring to the text which were not commonplace ornaments suitable for anything. The tailpiece on p. 202, taken from the works of Molière, brings forcibly to mind the _Médecin malgre Lui_, with its wood-cutter unmercifully beaten with sticks and muffled in a scientific robe. It is the same with other illustrations, that cannot be displaced from the position assigned to them by the artist without disappointment. [Illustration: Fig. 87.--Tailpiece from the _Médecin malgre Lui_, by Moreau le Jeune.]