“A fifth notable passes his hand before his eyes as if to dissipate some frightful nightmare. He stumbles, death so appals him.
“Finally, here is the sixth burgher, younger than the others. He seems still undecided. A painful anxiety contracts his face. Is it the image of his sweetheart that fills his thoughts? But his companions advance—he rejoins them, his neck outstretched as if offered to the axe of fate.
“While these three men of Calais may be less brave than the three first, they do not deserve less admiration. For their devotion is even more meritorious, because it costs them more.
“So, in your Burghers, one follows the action, more or less prompt, which was the outcome in each one of them according to his disposition of the authority and example of Eustache de Saint-Pierre. One sees them, gradually won by his influence, decide one after another to go forward with him to pay the price of their city.
“There, incontestably, is the best confirmation of your ideas on the scenic value of art.”
“If your opinion of my work were not too high,” Rodin answered, “I should acknowledge that you had perfectly understood my intentions. You have justly placed my burghers in the scale according to their degrees of heroism. To emphasize this effect still more I wished, as you perhaps know, to fix my statues one behind the other on the stones of the Place, before the Town Hall of Calais, like a living chaplet of suffering and of sacrifice.
One of the Burghers of Calais
By Rodin
“My figures would so have appeared to direct their steps from the municipal building toward the camp of Edward III.; and the people of Calais of to-day, almost elbowing them, would have felt more deeply the tradition of solidarity which unites them to these heroes. It would have been, I believe, intensely impressive. But my proposal was rejected, and they insisted upon a pedestal which is as unsightly as it is unnecessary. They were wrong. I am sure of it.”
“Alas,” I said, “the artist has always to reckon with the routine of opinion, too happy if he can only realize a part of his beautiful dreams!”