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Under the Second French Empire, the daily satirical newspaper Le Charivari published texts and drawings about the construction and opening of the Suez Canal. Generally supportive of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the newspaper was frequently critical of Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire, both of them long hostile to the excavation of the isthmus. But the newspaper also denounced de Lesseps’ “Suezomanie,” and moreover, during the official festivities of 1869, criticized the French bourgeoisie through the figure of the gregarious and invading tourist. Amédée de Noé, known as Cham, was one of Le Charivari’s most regular artists: while reinvigorating a number of orientalist clichés, he often used the figure of M. Prudhomme created by Henry Monnier to denounce the selfishness of those Europeans invited by the Khedive Isma’il Pasha, to celebrate the victory of “universal” progress, while throwing into suspicion the modern myth of the “marriage” between East and West.