“It was beautiful,” Anatole France replied, “since it has left us these Venuses; but do not believe that it was kindly. It was intolerant and tyrannical, like all forms of pious fervor. In the name of these Aphrodites of quivering flesh many noble souls were tortured. In the name of Olympus the Athenians offered the cup of hemlock to Socrates. And do you recall that verse of Lucretius:—
‘Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!’
“You see, if the gods of antiquity are sympathetic to us to-day it is because, fallen, they can no longer harm us.”
CHAPTER XI
AT THE LOUVRE
Several days later, Rodin, putting his promise into execution, asked me to accompany him to the Musée du Louvre.
We were no sooner before the antiques than he showed by his happy air that he was among old friends.
“How many times,” he said, “have I come here when I was not more than fifteen years old! I had a violent longing at first to be a painter. Color attracted me. I often went upstairs to admire the Titians and Rembrandts. But, alas! I hadn’t enough money to buy canvases and tubes of color. To copy the antiques, on the contrary, I needed only paper and pencils. So I was forced to work in the lower rooms, and there such a passion for sculpture seized me that I could think of nothing else.”
As I listened to Rodin while he told of his long study of the antique, I thought of the injustice done him by those false classicists who have accused him of being an insurgent against tradition. Tradition! It is this pretended revolutionary who, in our own day, has known it best and respected it most!
He led me to the room full of casts and, pointing out the Diadumenes by Polycletus, the original of which is in the British Museum, he said: “You can observe here the four directions that I indicated the other day in my clay statuette. Just examine the left side of this statue: the shoulder is slightly forward, the hip is back; again the knee is forward, the foot is back; and thence a gentle undulation of the whole results.
