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In 1889, Raffaëlli conceived of Les Types de Paris by facing his prints with texts from significant writers. In order to accompany Raffaëlli’s drawings, Mallarmé composed seven small poems, two of which would be reprinted in Poésies, with the title Chansons bas. Three interpretative threads guide our reading: first, locating Les Types de Paris within a tradition of “panoramic literature” and relating this exchange between the arts to the quest for a “middling” genre, between the high genre of the artist’s book and the low genre of the illustrated paper. Second, seeing how two ways of apprehending reality converse and exchange: Mallarmé’s symbolism, Raffaëlli’s naturalism. And finally, articulating the political stakes in these representations of modest folk, which have to make do with the consciousness of a class struggle putting republican ideals in crisis.