Chauveau left nearly 1,600 works (frontispices, vignettes...), including illustrations for works by Mademoiselle de Scudéry (he engraved the famous Map of Tendre and the frontispiece for her Artamène), Scarron, Molière, Racine and Boileau.
According to this story, Scarron, while residing at Le Mans, once tarred and feathered himself as a carnival freak and was obliged to hide in a swamp to escape the wrath of the townspeople.
Its tales of drastic adventures were based on the model of Spanish rogue stories (such as Lazarillo de Tormes 1554), which were fashionable due to the contemporary publication of Scarron's Roman Comique (or Comical Romance, so the English title which established the genre), and savoury with the events Head could claim to have based on his personal experience.