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"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms

Chapter 7: M. le President, Felix Faure.
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About This Book

A sequence of humorous mock coats of arms presents parody blazons, crests, supporters, and mottos that lampoon prominent public figures, institutions, and current events of the author's day. Each entry mimics heraldic language while twisting symbols into absurd, ironic descriptions that expose political foibles, journalistic excesses, and imperial pretensions. The work alternates detailed visual description with sharp, often bawdy wordplay, arranging entries like an illustrated armorial interspersed with brief epigrams. Through exaggerated symbolism and mock-formality, it satirizes power, public personalities, and civic ceremonial, inviting readers to view familiar characters and controversies through a comic, barbed heraldic lens.

M. le President, Felix Faure.

Arms / quarterly / i on a ground virulent two crosses of the legion of honour couped by a presidential hand sinister from the breast of two dreyfusards of repute, steadfast in rectitude / ij under the shield of the chief of the state tainted with bias, several dapper heraldic scoundrelles of the staff, plumed proper, braided gold to the waist, all banded together and rampant in tort / iij a series of highly-strung journalistic lyres in parry on the garble proper falsette in unison / iiij on a rock of degradation, interned in exile, a military scapegoat charged with treason, loaded with chains of evidence designed forged and welded in fraud, on the horizon, the first rays of a dawn of hope breaking through clouds of fury. Crests / i on a cap of liberty query, stained spotted and ensanguined gules, a peacock in pride proper, his head slightly turned, charged with the riband and star of the order of St. Andrew and a penchant for display verging on puerility / ii on a bend of the upper Nile a tricolourd African interlope of civilisation, dumped down squatty on the bank, collared eradicated and reflexed in agony. Supporters / dexter, a Russian bear sable, imperially crowned and gorged with loans hysterically courted and caressed ad nauseam, simpery bowy bendy to the last, but reluctant in committal / sinister, a double-faced eagle of Muscovy reguardant azure in dismay a kettle of fish a la parisienne. Second Motto / 'Felix fortunatus caesaris sociusque amicus.'

Additional Motto / 'Felix ill-egalite.'