It followed the publication of Charles Dupin's (1784–1873) Carte figurative de l’instruction populaire, with its famous Saint-Malo–Geneva line, supposedly separating the educated North from the ignorant South. This craze even reached... operetta!
Just look at the lyrics of the "statistics song" from Jacques Offenbach's (1819–1880) comic opera La Belle Lurette, which premiered on October 30, 1880, at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. In this three-act operetta, Malicorne, steward to the Duke of Marly, delivers the following lines from a French libretto by Ernest Blum, Édouard Blau and Raoul Toché:
"Yes, I proudly confess: I devote myself to statistics.
My work is patriotic; my aim is wholly worthwhile.
It offers all who wish to expand
A field so vast and so deep
That even those who practise it
Have never managed to understand a thing.
And so, forever making the calculations I undertake more complex,
The calculations I undertake,
I want to live to do statistics, do statistics (repeat).
I want to live to do statistics and die doing statistics.
Yes, die doing statistics, doing statistics.
I want to live to do statistics and die doing statistics.
Die doing statistics!"
