Tim of the brave caricature, of the demon pen, of the richly sculpted bronzes in the Tuileries, the National Assembly, Pere Lachaise cemetery‹all over Paris he can be found, here in a statue of the early 19th century satirist Daumier inventing his character Ratapoil or there in the heart of Montparnasse in a sculpture of Dreyfus, his sword broken after his phony trial. In his books, in museums, in galleries and in the libraries of Paris, we find his drawings pointing out politicians' foibles, taking down their pretensions, defending sanity, exalting justice. The pages of what is written in our hearts will miss his visual, visceral poetry.

This is more about us than about Louis, and in a sense that is a tribute to him, because Louis was more about ourselves than he was about him. A modest man, he was mostly a listener, not a talker, an observer, a chronicler, not so much a participant. When urged, he would recount tales of the fight against the Nazis that put no emphasis on his own wartime bravery, playing it down, playing up the insanity of that war. Yet he was a hero in every sense.

Born in Poland in 1917, he migrated to France just ahead of the German advance into his country at the onset of World War II, and he promptly enlisted in the French army. In early 1940, he fought against the Germans until his unit was surrounded and he was taken prisoner. He was interned in an East German prison camp from which, with four other prisoners, he escaped to Russia, where he was again interned until the Nazis attacked. The next year, with 200 other escapees, he was sent to Archangel, where, on the first of many Canadian lend-lease ships, the group embarked for Scotland. Charles de Gaulle met them there. Louis joined the Free French and was sent to fight the Nazis in Africa.

After the war, he became a cartoonist for L'Express, the Paris magazine, ultimately joining its editorial board. In 1969, he was invited to do drawings for the new Op Ed page of The New York Times by its designer, Louis Silverstein, and thereafter he appeared on its pages and those of many other American, British and French publications.

His distaste for the poseur and the fraudulent are clearly seen in his drawings‹from Mao to Reagan, he was the caricaturist supreme. Politically left of center‹naturally‹he was a strong supporter of the state of Israel and declaimed anti-Semitism and all other forms of prejudice, both in his drawings and in his personal life. How he felt about de Gaulle, I think, was evident in his depiction of the enigmatic nose, the narrow eyes, the frosty expression. This was not a man Tim trusted, nor should you.

Louis was married for 50 years to the Californian artist Zuka. They lived in Paris, where they both worked and supported each other in the pursuit of their art. The last two years of his life, when he was quite ill, he still was working hard at his last sculpture, the Daumier. Always charming and attentive to whoever was speaking, Louis was subdued and not quite himself the last time that we saw him. But the essence of Tim was in his probing blue eyes as they looked out, somewhat startlingly, observing an unconcerned and inhumane world, a world for which he could never settle.

Helen Abby Becker lives in New York.