It only took a few more years for Degas to become too indoctrinated in hatred to distinguish his friend from the rest of the “yids” (qtd. Nochlin, 156). By 1883, Degas had created a series of monotypes featuring Halévy as the embodiment of anti-Semitic stereotypes, exaggerating his Semitic features and portraying him as amoral and greedy. Degas made the monotypes to illustrate Halévy’s book La Famille Cardinal, a satire of social-climbing ballet dancers, controlling stage mothers and the backstage sex-trade. Hoping to illustrate a new edition of the book, originally published in 1872, Degas created a collection of monotypes inspired by the story in the early 1880s. Since Halévy narrated the book in the first person, Degas included him in nine of the illustrations (Janis, xxi). But because he was depicted as a stereotypical Jew, Halévy rejected Degas’ sketches, putting a strain on their friendship (Armstrong, 13-14). In his book, Degas: The Artist’s Mind, Theodore Reff suggested that Halévy did not publish his friend’s monotypes because,
“On the whole, Degas’ illustrations are more a recreation of the spirit and ambience of Halévy’s book than authentic illustrations” (Reff, 186). While Reff is correct in his interpretation of the sketches as illustrations of the book’s general ideas rather than specific scenes, it is naïve to claim that as the sole reason Halévy rejected them. Most likely, Halévy did not appreciate the drawings’ resemblance to popular anti-Semitic caricatures.
In each sketch, he is drawn with a hooked nose, bulging eyes and pursed lips protruding out of a bushy beard. In fact, his face is nearly indistinguishable from the caricature of Ernest May in At the Bourse. In the sketch Conversation: Ludovic Halévy and Mme. Cardinal (ca. 1883), Halévy’s nose sticks out so far beyond the brim of his top hat that he seems to be pointing it in Madame Cardinal’s face. In another sketch, Ludovic Halévy Talking to Mme. Cardinal (ca. 1883), his nose is slightly less exaggerated, but his beard has grown in size and scruff to compensate, almost entirely obscuring his face. 
Halévy’s quiet dignity from Friends in the Wings is nowhere to be found.
Instead, the sketches openly mock him, portraying him not as a narrator, but as a participant in the stereotypically Jewish business of prostitution. While Halévy’s book scorns the seedy practice of selling young dancers’ bodies behind the scenes at the ballet, Degas deliberately cast him as the instigator of an illicit deal. For example, in the drawing Ludovic Halévy Talking to Mme. Cardinal (ca. 1883), he leans toward the dancers’ mother, Madame Cardinal, conducting a serious, even conspiratorial conversation. It is understood that he is negotiating the price of her daughters’ bodies, either for himself or on behalf of other men. In the sketch Ludovic Halévy Backstage (ca. 1883), he hides himself in an alcove to stare lecherously at a group of young girls. Halévy’s participation in the monotypes along with the exaggeration of his Semitic features make the images look like the popular caricatures of the time that featured Jews as either prostitutes’ pimps or their customers (Nochlin, 154). This imagery, found in posters, pamphlets and newspapers, added to the disgust with which Jews were viewed and furthered the accusations that they were “whoring” France for their own gain. The Cardinal illustrations, featuring Halévy participating in the buying and selling of flesh, show that Degas could no longer separate his friend from “the Jews,” a single entity he believed was financially exploiting France. Degas was so steeped in the imagery of hate and the rhetoric of anti-Semitism that he was unable to picture his friend as a unique person, but rather as just one more stereotypical Jew.
top left: Halévy, Ludovic. The Cardinal Family. Photograph from www.betweenthecovers.com.
top right: Degas, Edgar. Ludovic Halévy Finds Mme. Cardinal in the Dressing Room. From Janis, Eugenia Parry, ed. Degas Monotypes: Essay, Catalogue & Checklist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1968.
bottom left: Degas, Edgar. At the Bourse. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
middle right: Degas, Edgar. Conversation: Ludovic Halévy and Mme. Cardinal. From Janis, Eugenia Parry, ed. Degas Monotypes: Essay, Catalogue & Checklist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1968.
bottom right: Degas, Edgar. Ludovic Halévy Speaking with Madame Cardinal. From Janis, Eugenia Parry, ed. Degas Monotypes: Essay, Catalogue & Checklist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1968.