They reflect the image of the modern Parisienne, of that woman whose demeanor and toilette leave one not knowing quite what to think—hesitating to say a priori whether she is an honest woman or not.31 Criticism of paintings of this type could be extended into a whole- sale moral condemnation. L. Laurent-Pichat pursued this argument at great length in the republican newspaper Le Reveil in 1870: Let us turn our attention to these likable young people who know so well how to dress themselves and how to wear a low-cut dress—to these idle society women who have nothing to do and whose little heads are filled with unhealthy dreams. For this art that is dressed up in silk and velvet is just as immoral as the nude art that we discussed a few days ago. Looking at these women, "young, coquettish, preoccupied with mysteries, seduc- tive, amusing, inviting," the critic kept asking: "Has she any children?" He imag- ined the women with their lovers while their husbands pursued honest careers.32 Comments such as these are part of a wider debate about the rela- tionship between consumerist luxury and immorality that continued throughout the last years of the Second Empire. Fostered by anxiety at the licence of Napoleon Ill's court and the apparent triumph of the lorette (a high-class courte- san), this debate focused on the perceived impossibility of determining a woman's moral and sexual respectability from observation of her dress, appear- 33 ance, and manner. In Laurent-Pichat's diatribe, as so often in reviews of these pictures, there is a constant and fascinating slippage between the discussion of the paint- ings and of the supposed "real world" they represent. It was their legibility and seeming transparency that made it so easy for viewers and critics alike to view them as unmediated. Instead of being recognized as value-laden fictions, they were frequently seen as unproblematic reflections of the social reality they pur- ported to represent and were judged not as art but as an integral part of this social reality. At the same time there was another, quite distinct form of critique of fashionable genre painting—articulated to some degree in art criticism, but 28