From a photograph by J. E. Bulloz

Portrait bust of Victor Hugo by Auguste Rodin

world, and done over and over again so many times, out of place, and out of proportion, that they had lost all significance. Their employer possessed a beautiful, but neglected, garden, where a profusion of plants ran riot. Here were models in abundance. Here, in reproducing these, the young craftsmen refreshed their calling; they copied their ornaments from nature; they studied foliage and flowers from life. To do new work, they had only to borrow from the vegetable world certain of its inexhaustible combinations of beauty.

Here Rodin, by his cleverness and rapidity, became without a peer among them all, and drew to himself the admiration of his fellow-workers. It was here that he met the Constant Simon, his elder by many years, who was the first man to teach him to model in profile. It was one of the great epochs in his life. One may

say that from that time the two great laws that have given his sculpture its power-the study of nature and the right method of modeling-passed into his blood, as it were. The secret that Simon imparted to him was like a philter that inflamed his soul with enthusiasm. He became intoxicated with the idea of seeing clearly, and of holding his hand strictly accountable to what his eyes disclosed. And he possessed, too, both youth and an indefatigable vigor. He sketched everything he could, and wherever he could. One saw him making sketches on the street, in the horse-market, jostled by the beasts, repulsed by men, yet indifferent to all difficulties in his enchantment in his discovered prize; at the Jardin des Plantes, when he passed hours before the cages and in the parks, studying the poses of the deer and the grace of the moving antelopes.

At that period Barye taught at the Museum. Rodin had become асquainted with the son of the celebrated sculptor. The two had discovered a corner of the basement, a

sort of cave, damp and gloomy, where they installed some seats made of old boxes and delighted themselves in modeling from clay. From the Museum they borrowed a few anatomical specimens, fragments of the parts of animals, and these they carried to their cavern and pored over in their efforts to copy them. Sometimes Barye himself would come to cast his eye over their work and give them a word of advice, and then would go away, buried in a silent reverie. He was a man of simple habits, with the appearance of a college tutor, in his well-worn coat, but giving an impressive suggestion of great force and worth. His son and Rodin little understood him; they feared him somewhat, and only half profited by his suggestions. Later the author of the "Bourgeois de Calais," kindled by the genius of the gloomy, severe man whom he had misunderstood, felt a deep remorse at not having rendered to Barye while

From a photograph by J. E. Bulloz

Head of Balzac by Auguste Rodin

man and the animals, between the mountains and the vegetable world. It is by understanding this unity that he can occasionally interpret with a scientific exactness this common relationship. In modeling a centaur or the chimera or a spirit with powerful wings, the mythological creature that appears from his hands does not appear less a transcript from reality than each bust or each statue that has been vigorously wrought from the living model. There is no weakening in the points where the bust of the man or of the woman attaches itself to the body of the animal, no doubt that the beautiful, strong wings of the angels are any less perfectly united to their bodies or are less necessary than their arms or legs.

When about twenty-two or twentythree Rodin entered the atelier of CarrierBelleuse. At that time the vogue of this charming artist was great. He well represented the spirit and workmanship of the eighteenth century in the knickknack art of the Second Empire. He was a Clodion of the boulevard. Besides the spirited busts, some of which, like that of Ernest

Renan, Jules Simon, and the actress Marie Laurent, were celebrated, he sent out from his atelier, in the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne at Montmartre, hundreds of designs to be used in industrial art: mantelpieces, centerpieces for tables, vases, ornamental clocks, and decorative figures and groups. Rodin, then, applied himself to executing for Carrier-Belleuse a variety of statuettes and figures. There was in the task a great danger, for he saw the risk of limiting himself to a facile use of his art both remunerative and attractive; but his sturdy Northern temperament was able to protect him against every danger, whether of success or poverty.

Carrier had an astonishing skill, and not only worked without a model, but com

pelled his employers to work without one. His rough sketches were admirable, but he weakened in working them out. Rodin never trifled with his art. Before going to the atelier he always took care to study his subject in the nude and to fix it in his memory as firmly as possible. As soon as he reached his bench he transferred to the clay the result of his remembered observations. On returning to his home in the evening he consulted his model anew in order to correct his work of the day. It was for him an excellent exercise of memory. The true workman is quick to turn to advantage all the inconveniences of a situation. I have heard Rodin relate that often in the course of a quarrel with a friend or a relative he would completely forget the subject of the contention and the anger of his opponent in his absorption, from the point of view of a sculptor, with the play of the muscles and their influence on the expression of the face of the angry speaker.

Rodin remained about five years with Carrier-Belleuse. What works his active hands accomplished there in a day! One still finds them in the shops of the sellers of bronzes, in the shops of the dealers of the Marais and the Faubourg St.-Antoine. Certainly hundreds of examples were brought there, to the great profit of tradesmen, but to an injury of the artist; for he drew from them only such wages as the least competent workers are to-day content with.

One may see in the gallery of Mrs. of New York certain little terracotta busts which date from that period. They represent pretty Parisian women in hats, whose wild locks veil glances full of spirit and roguishness. Creatures of youth and frivolity, they are sisters of the elegant ladies that Alfred Stevens drew with his delightful brush, and which were the charm of Paris under Napoleon III. Who could believe that they had sprung from the hands of Rodin, the austere creator of the "Bourgeois de Calais" and of the "Victor Hugo"?

But before becoming the audaciously personal genius that he now is, he was subjected to the most varied influencesinfluences that have been felt by the modern sculptors with whom he has worked and those that guided the old masters. He has none the less shielded himself from the world. He declares indeed, with the authority that permits the freedom, that originality signifies nothing; that which alone counts is the quality of the intrinsic sculpture; that if the temperament of the artist is truly steadfast, he always finds himself after the necessary study; and finally that it is of little importance whether a statue bears the name of Praxiteles or that of one of his pupils. The essential thing is that it is well done, that it appears in a great epoch. Anonymous, it proclaims none the less to the eyes of the man of taste the signature of genius.

In order to live Rodin applied himself to the most varied occupations; thus he gained the liberty to labor at his own work for a few hours. He chipped at stone and marble for the benefit of sculptors to-day unknown, but then in vogue;

From a photograph by J. E. Bulloz

"The Man who Walks" by Auguste Rodin

he made sketches for trinkets for certain fashionable jewelers; and fashioned certain objects of decorative art ordered of him by manufacturers. Despite a considerable loss of time, he obtained thus a true apprenticeship in art wholly like that which in earlier days was obtained by Ghiberti, Donatello, and most of the great artists of the Renaissance, who were proud to be good artisans before they were accounted great sculptors.

Thus finally he was enabled to realize his first dream-to have an atelier of his His atelier! It was a stable, at a rental of twenty-four dollars a year, in the rue Lebrun, in the quarter of the Gobelins, near which he was born. It was a cold hovel, cave indeed, with a well sunk in an angle of one wall that at every season exhaled its chilling breath. It did not matter. The place was sufficiently large and well lighted. The artist, young and strong, and as happy as possible in his stable, there felt his talent increasing. There he accumulated a quantity of studies and works until the place was so