Les tribunaux secrets : ouvrage historique
A French historical novel by Paul Féval, published in Paris by Legrand et Crouzet in 1880, on the subject of secret societies. The pictures are arched-top steel engravings in a mid-nineteenth-century romantic style: a street brawl with a man in a top hat and a woman in a crinoline, a hooded figure heating something over a brazier beside a woman in a doorway, a kneeling figure reaching out in a dim cave, and a seated man in a garden watching a woman in a long dress. A designer could take the arched frames, the dramatic lighting and the crowded, theatrical staging of these scenes.
