I could easily fancy it. The brow of Victor Hugo thus supporting the weight of a monumental arch would symbolize the genius on which all the thought and all the activity of an epoch had rested.
“I give this idea to any architect who will put it into execution,” Rodin added.
Close by stood the cast of the bust of Henri Rochefort. It is well known; the head of an insurgent, the forehead as full of bumps as that of a pugnacious child who is always fighting his companions, the wild tuft of hair which seems to wave like a signal for mutiny, the mouth twisted by irony, the mad beard; a continual revolt, the very spirit of criticism and combativeness. Admirable work it is, in which one sees one side of our contemporary mentality reflected.
“It was also through Bazire,” said Rodin, “that I made the acquaintance of Henri Rochefort, who was editor-in-chief of his newspaper. The celebrated polemic consented to pose to me. He had such a joyous spirit that it was an enchantment to listen to him, but he could not keep still for a single instant. He reproached me pleasantly for having too much professional conscience. He said laughingly that I spent one sitting in adding a lump of clay to the model and the next in taking it away.
Henri Rochefort
By Rodin
“When, some time after, his bust received the approbation of men of taste, he joined unreservedly in their praises, but he would never believe that my work had remained exactly as it was when I took it away from his house. ‘You have retouched it very much,’ he would repeat. In reality, I had not even touched it with my nail.”
Rodin, placing one of his hands over the tuft of hair and the other over the beard, then asked me, “What impression does it make now?”
“You would say it was a Roman emperor.”
“That is just what I wanted to make you say. I have never found the Latin classic type as pure as in Rochefort.”