Returning from a review at the Champ de Mars in Paris [graphic]

"Soldiers in double file march (left to right) in a Paris street diagonally across the design. They are led by a fat debauched-looking monk who leers at a nun by his side; both carry drawn sabres. A fiddler capers in front of the pair. Next is a drummer; the soldiers are correctly dressed and carry bayoneted muskets. A man with a long loaf of bread waves his hat frantically. In the foreground (left) is a shoeblack who, gazing at the monk and nun, applies his brush to the stocking of his enraged customer. Other spectators are a lawyer, an officer arm-in-arm with a coquettish girl. On the extreme right a 'limonadier', his vessel strapped to his back, turns its tap into the glass of a dwarfish boy or man. The lower part of buildings abutting on the street forms a background: a church wedged between a house (left) and a barber's shop (right) indicated by wigs and implements painted on the shutter, &c."--British Museum online catalogue