A few years later Rodin engaged himself as a workman in the studio of the fashionable sculptor, Carrier-Belleuse, prior to emigrating to Brussels, as assistant to the Belgium sculptor, Van Rasbourg. Thirteen years were spent in these employments. It was not until Rodin returned to Paris, aged thirty-one, that his career as an independent sculptor commenced. In 1877, he sent the famous male nude, “The Age of Brass,” to the Salon. The story of its reception is well known. The jury, astonished at its realism, admitted the works. But so perfect did they consider its modelling, that they refused to believe that the sculptor had not taken a cast from the life. Fortunately, a friend was at hand—M. Turquet, of the Ministry of Fine Arts—who secured the statue for the Luxembourg collection. The struggle continued until 1880, when officialdom finally decided to approve the purchase of the “Age of Brass” and withdrew an entirely unjustifiable charge. In the same year, the State purchased the “St. John Baptist,” a fine bronze replica of which can be seen at South Kensington Museum. At the age of forty, when many men have abandoned all hope, Rodin found the path to fame open. The long struggle over the “Age of Brass” had brought notoriety, no small matter in an age of advertisement. Events soon proved that it had done much more. A dogmatic revolutionary like Rodin only required to realize how utterly his ideals clashed with those of his rivals to cling to them with fourfold energy. The treble rejection by the École des Beaux Arts and the cruel struggle with the Salon Jury turned a sculptor who would only have been a mediocre academician into a reactionary of genius. Rodin’s reputation as a fighter has led many to believe that his work is essentially uncouth. His technical powers matured slowly, but to-day no French sculptor is more richly endowed. When he pleases, Rodin can render, say, the velvety softness of a woman’s flesh with an ease and delicate grace that any sculptor might envy. A beautiful example of this side of Rodin’s genius is furnished by the “Fallen Danaid” (1888). The girl has fallen, in a paroxysm of grief, on a rocky stretch—the very roughness of the setting offering a beautiful contrast to the soft modelling of the limbs. The face is half buried. The dishevelled hair trails amid the broken fragments of the water jar. As we said of Carpeaux’s “Flora,” the “Danaid” is a subject which might occupy the chisel of the most academic sculptor. But there is not a suggestion of an earlier imagination in Rodin’s rendering. He has simply felt the thing afresh and expressed himself in the manner which seemed most suitable. The “Danaid” represents one side of Rodin’s genius, but perhaps the life-work of the sculptor can be most readily appreciated from some account of the mysterious “Gate of Hell,” which looms so largely in all biographical notices of the sculptor.