1887? 68 Cards lithographed by Vieillemard et ses Fils, Rue de la Glaciere 16, Paris. Gold-bordered circular-scene lithographs, apparently signed in 1887, on one side and verse texts on the other. 2¾" x 4¼". Most are without advertising or numbers and are marked here "VF"; some, with numbers in a set of 72, advertise Chocolat Guérin-Boutron (CGB) on the image side of the card. A few of the VF cards advertise Bourcheix & Fils (BF) on the back of the card, where all others have a fable text on the back. If there are no initials with a card, it is a VF card without a Bourcheix back. One VF card advertises above its picture Musculosine Byla (MB) without numbers. Generally good condition. $50 from Doris Frohnsdorff, Rosslyn, March, '92. Additional individual cards have come from Bernard Cocq, Spring, '01, and from both P. Bresch and Annick Tilly, Clignancourt, August, '01.

Excellent and witty art. Often an animal story is rendered in a human scene, as in FG (a thin man walks away from a butcher shop), DW (a bum walks with a dog-leading burgher), 2P (a rich man throws money, while a poor man has to dig into his pocket for it), and TH (a legless beggar beats a legged one!). The art seems heavily dependent on Grandville (note the face of the bumpkin in "The Cock and the Pearl"), with perhaps some influence from Doré. 68 cards, of which ten feature fables of Florian and the other fifty-eight present fables by La Fontaine. I have some twenty doubles besides. I long imagined that some such set must exist, and I am delighted at last to find one! I have followed the orthography of the card fronts in writing the titles of the fables.