There's no Physiologie du chiffonnier, but he's a legendary creature in all this literature. The fifteen volumes of Le Livre des cent-et-un (1831-1834), advertised under the title Le Diable boiteux à Paris, sought to "review modern Paris" in the manner of the devil Asmodeus strolling the rooftops of Madrid in Alain-René Lesage's novel. In one of Janin's chapters, the ragpicker appears as an allegorical nocturnal vigilante traversing history, a masked double of the writer. In 1834, in his Nouveau Tableau de Paris au xixe siècle, Nicolas Brazier evoked the ragpicker's often military origins, his reputation as an informer and his allegorical dimension. He ironizes Liard and describes the ragpickers' riot as a "conspiracy of tombereaux". In 1841, in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, Berthaud divided the ragpickers into the more professional Auverpins and the Parisians. The following year, several works, including those by Émile de La Bédollière and Paul de Kock, dealt in part with the subject. It was at this point that Baudelaire composed the first version of "Vin des chiffonniers". In 1844, the ragpicker appeared in L'Illustration; in 1852, in Texier's Tableau de Paris; in 1852, in Gérard de Nerval's Les Nuits d'octobre, where the ragpicker encountered at the drinking establishment is a former "marvellous" who knew Barras. This was also the period of Privat d'Anglemont's feuilletons in Le Siècle.
A pantomime by Jean-Gaspard Debureau, Le Billet de mille francs (1826), recounts the misadventures of a dizzy ragpicker. Philippe Musard, conductor of the bals de l'Opéra de la rue Le Pelletier, composed a quadrille of Les Chiffonniers de Paris (1847-1848). Musard's bals were a great success at carnival time, when people sometimes dressed up as ragpickers, as in this Gavarni caricature; others show the proximity of the ragpicker to the Opéra ball or the carnival, themes found in Baudelaire's work. Pyat's Le Chiffonnier de Paris begins on a carnival evening, and features a good, philosophical ragpicker, Father Jean. Frédéric Lemaître is said to have learned his trade from Liard. In the most famous scene, the hero sorts through his booty, finding "all of Paris", as in Baudelaire's "cataloguing" scene from Les Misérables. When, on February 26, 1848, a crown was added to the booty, Janin was scandalized. Pyat included this passage in the republication of his play during the Third Republic. The theme of mud and crowns continues, sometimes associated with Napoleon rather than the king - engravings show the two emperors as ragpickers, or ragpickers taking on the role of Napoleon. Pyat republished his play in 1884, then turned it into a serial novel. This was followed by two film adaptations (1913 and 1924). For Jean Pommier, Pyat's drama is a source of "Vin des chiffonniers", but it's more that they both borrow from the same familiar legend. As for Pyat, he must have read Baudelaire, as his preface to the new edition of Le Chiffonnier shows.
