Creighton University

"Card" is almost too strong a word for these thick-paper, small cards.  However, the illustrations are executed in careful, loving, lively fashion.  It is unusual to have so many cards devoted to presenting one fable.  The fable is among the longer La Fontaine fables.  Each card presents one or a few verses on its front, along with the title, number, and illustration.  The verso features, in its upper half, a numbered commentary on La Fontaine's fable and, in the lower half, an unchanging advertisement for Daniel Voelcker-Coumes and his Chicorée Extra.  Black outlines help to define the main characters in each scene.  The sometimes minimal changes from one scene to the next are highly effective, for example, when #6 fills in the rats he threatens against the weasel, rats pictured against the same clouds we saw in #5.  The same effect is there as the two litigants draw closer to the judge from #12 to #13. These cards are quite different from Daniel Voelcker-Coumes' other series of double cards.