ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
By Rodin
Photogravure reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
CHAPTER XII
ON THE USEFULNESS OF THE ARTIST
I
The day before the vernissage (varnishing day), I met Auguste Rodin at the Salon de la Société Nationale in Paris. He was accompanied by two of his pupils, themselves past-masters: the sculptor Bourdelle, who was this year exhibiting a fierce Hercules piercing the Stymphalian birds with his arrows, and Despiau, who models exquisitely clever busts.
All three had stopped before a figure of the god Pan, which Bourdelle had whimsically carved in the likeness of Rodin, and the creator of the work was excusing himself for the two small horns which he had set upon the master’s forehead.
“You had to do it,” Rodin replied, laughing, “because you are representing Pan. Michael Angelo gave just such horns to his Moses. They are the emblem of omnipotence and omniscience, and I assure you that I am flattered to have been so favored by your attentions.”
As it was now noon, Rodin invited us all three to lunch with him somewhere in the neighborhood.
We passed out into the Avenue des Champs Élysées, where beneath the crude young green of the chestnut-trees the motors and carriages slipped by in shining files, all the brilliance of Parisian life flashing here from its brightest and most fascinating setting.
“Where are we going to lunch?” Bourdelle asked, pausing with comical anxiety. “In the big restaurants about here we shall be waited upon by solemn men-servants in dress-coats, which I cannot bear. They frighten me. I advise some quiet little restaurant where the cabbies go.”