The statue of the Curé d'Ars possesses to a striking degree this suprasensible aspect that I have just noticed. By contact with divinity the marble itself is transfigured—grace sheds its beams and gives to the features a kind of immaterial transparency. Jesus Christ is present and breathes into the passionate and ravished eyes, into the lips and the blessed smile; the personage lives in another world; his attitude, his movements have nothing in common with earth. If the spectator could ignore the name of the priest represented, his attention would not be less arrested, and he would easily recognize in his face the presence of a supernatural element, heightening the human personality.
Here, however, I will make a remark. The body of the Curé d'Ars is not in unison with his face; it is too material, too vigorous, too vulgar even, if I dare speak from my heart. "The cassock of the Curé d'Ars seems to have nothing under its large folds," said the biographer. … "He was a shadow," added he still further. Now, the Curé d'Ars of the artist has nothing of a shadowy appearance. His shoulders are strong, his breast large, his hands knotty. The sculptor has wished to express the humble origin of the priest, but in my opinion he has forgotten the transformation which the contemplative and mystical life had necessarily operated in the organization of the saint.
This remark, necessary to be made, detracts nothing, or almost nothing, from the merit of the work; it could only be appreciated by those who have personally known the Curé d'Ars, and ceases to be of import since his death.
V.
We can now understand the character and various merits of the statue of M. Cabuchet. All who see it retire satisfied, and the mass of spectators are struck by the pious and compassionate expression of the holy priest. Connoisseurs admire the freedom of the effect and of the execution. The author may be proud of his success. He has paid for it by effort and anguish of every kind, and it is well to know sometimes these artist-struggles, that we may rightly value the works that charm us so much.
When the statue came from the workshop of the finisher, the sculptor did not recognize it. He had expected his model to be reproduced on a less grand scale, and the difference of proportion rendered it not easy to be known again. At such a result Cabuchet experienced one of those counter-blows which have made certain young artists of twenty grow old in a quarter of an hour, and only those who have tried to realize an ideal can perfectly understand such emotion. Benvenuto and Palissy in similar moments were taken with fevers which brought them to the very portals of the tomb. Sigalon, noticing his picture of Athalie compromised by difference of light, saw his hair turn gray in two minutes. Cabuchet had no less trouble, and the wonder is he escaped a similar shock; he withstood it, however, and, seeing no other means, he did what any valiant artist would have done in his place; he took his chisel and mallet, and in the style of Michael Angelo and Puget he attacked the marble. Each blow knocked off a piece, but each blow soothed the heart of the sculptor, for in reducing his statue he re-established it in its first form, and restored its true physiognomy.
Cabuchet has devoted a year to such labor. For a whole year he has worked with chisel and mallet, seeking the form, the movement, the life; and finding, little by little, this form, movement, and life at the end of his tools. He played a dangerous game; the first stroke of the hammer could have destroyed his work. Driven to a corner, the artist acted as a great captain. He risked all to gain all. Fortune, which encourages audacity, or rather the good God who sustains energetic and faithful artists, came to his aid; and at the end of a year Cabuchet saw his statue re-created by his chisel, and become truly and doubly the daughter of his brain and of his hands. He gained more than one wrinkle at this task and more than one white hair. According to his own expression, he sweated many shirts. But he forgot difficulties and anxieties when he saw the long dreamed of figure, the ideal of his days and nights, realized and looming before him!
VI.
They have given this excellent work a reception worthy of it. At its arrival at the dock at Villefranche, near the village of Ars, a numerous cavalcade, and a multitude composed of the entire surrounding population, rushed to meet it, and received it with transports of love and admiration. The faithful, the penitents of the holy curé, saw again their master and their model. The parish saw again its venerated father. They surrounded the marble, they tried to touch it; many fell on their knees, and prayed as before the images of the saints. On the day of the inauguration the demonstrations were the same; every moment a newly collected crowd prostrated itself at the foot of the statue; flowers were hung on it, and rosaries and medals laid on the pedestal. Each believed that new and strengthening virtue would escape from the marble and regenerate those happy enough to approach it; and yet this marble was nothing more than a work of genius; it had not even been blessed, it had no place in the church, it had received no certificate or consecration from Rome—no matter! the crowd saw none of these obstacles. Abandoning themselves without after-thought to the impression which sanctity always produces on the masses, they rushed to the image of the man who appeared to them a saint, as we seek the Consoler and Alleviator of all human suffering.