PERISTYLE OP THE STUDIO AT MEUDON.
Thus everything combined to make him lend an ear to the unfavorable opinions of the Parisian aviary. Had he been in better health, more the master of himself physically and morally, he would have replied to the prattling of these excited paroquets and guinea-hens:
"Take more room, examine my 'Gate' from a little farther off, and you will see once more the effect of the whole—the effect of unity which charms you when it is deprived of its ornamentation. You must understand that my sculpture is so calculated as to melt into the principal masses. For that matter, it completes them by modeling them into the light. The essential designs are there: it is possible that in the course of the final work I may find it necessary to diminish such or such a projection, to fill out such or such a pool of shadow; nevertheless, leave this difficulty to my fifty years of artisanship and experience, and you may be sure that quite by myself I shall find the best way of finishing my work."
But the master was silent. Later, carried away by the abundance of his conceptions, by his ever-deepening researches, he lost all interest in the "Gate" and has never taken the trouble to have it entirely mounted.
Fortunately, casts of it have been carefully preserved. It would be only an affair of a few months to reconstruct the work in its original integrity. Since the Universal Exposition time has rolled forward, and events also. Auguste Rodin has entered into the great serenity which age brings with it. He composes less, he corrects his work, he judges himself, and he does not deny his "Gate," one of the most exceptional of his works.
At last the creation of the Musée Rodin has been decided upon by the state. "The Gate of Hell" will be one of its important pieces; we shall be able to contemplate it then in all its majesty; it will not then simply be molded in plaster, but cast in bronze and cut in marble. It will offer a noble example of what work can accomplish when it is served by that supreme gift, will; for it will testify as much to resistance against the powerful enemies of the life of thought as to the intelligence of the man who created it. It forces upon us not only a formidable impression of strength, labor, talent, but also an impression no less lofty of method, order, and inner harmony. The multitude, who through their profound instincts approach much closer than one might suppose to the man of genius, will exclaim in contemplating this work, this true monument which undoubtedly the sculptor has raised through his own force of character, "Whoever erected this beautiful thing with his indefatigable hands was truly a man."