Yet, no, that was not all. In the looks they exchanged there was a world of intelligence, appreciation, comprehension. Rodin, with his peculiar figure, his long beard, and his eyes that gaze right through you, was matched, as regards simplicity, by this husband and wife. The former, brown, tall, and thin, the latter, slight and blonde, had alike a single aim, that of not making themselves conspicuous.
In the temple there was silence—a silence profound, admiring, almost religious, the effect of which I should like to be able to reproduce.
Rodin led us to a work of which he was particularly fond. Motionless and mute, the two visitors looked at the masterpiece before them. Rodin in his turn looked at them, fondling the marble and awaiting from them some sign of approbation or of comprehension, a word, a movement of the head or the hand.
Thus, from work to work, from room to room—for there are three studios in Rodin’s temple—we made our way, slowly, silently, our artistic pilgrimage taking on something of the significance of a communion.
In the two hours we passed in the temple hardly ten words were spoken.
When the inspection of the three studios was finished, a gentleman and a lady walking across the garden came towards us, and Rodin, in a very simple way, mentioned the names of M. and Mme. Carrière, the great painter and his wife. M. Carrière and his wife are also as free from ostentation as Rodin himself and the pair of scholars who accompanied me.
We left. In the carriage that took us back I asked my friends if they could describe their impressions, their sensations. They replied in the negative. Yet on their faces there were evidences of great happiness, and I knew they had appreciated and understood Rodin. These two people are known throughout the world. They are the greatest chemists of our day, peers of the celebrated Berthelot. Since then the husband, like Berthelot, has gone to his last rest and the wife carries on their common activities. I would give a good deal to be able adequately to express the admiration I feel for her, but out of deference to her own desire for simplicity and self-effacement I must not even mention her name.
So far as I myself am concerned, I may say that Rodin is, like the great master, Anatole France, one of the men in France who have impressed me most strongly.
Anatole France has been so kind as to say some things about me at the beginning of this volume—words exquisitely expressed, and of which, although far too laudatory, I am naturally very proud.
I am not less proud of Rodin’s good opinion. This opinion I have noted in a letter the great sculptor wrote to one of my friends. Not for reasons of vanity do I reproduce it here, but because of the simplicity of its form and in grateful remembrance of the great pleasure it caused me.