As he spoke he showed me on a pedestal near by one of his most beautiful statues, a young man kneeling, raising suppliant arms to heaven. All his being is drawn out with anguish. His body is thrown backwards. The breast heaves, the throat is tense with despair, and the hands are thrown out towards some mysterious being to which they long to cling. “Look!” he said to me; “I have accented the swelling of the muscles which express distress. Here, here, there—I have exaggerated the straining of the tendons which indicate the outburst of prayer.” And, with a gesture, he underlined the most vigorous parts of his work. “I have you, Master!” I cried ironically; “you say yourself that you have _accented_, _accentuated_, _exaggerated_. You see, then, that you have changed nature.” He began to laugh at my obstinacy. [Illustration: INVOCATION By Rodin ] “No,” he replied. “I have not changed it. Or, rather, if I have done it, it was without suspecting it at the time. The feeling which influenced my vision showed me Nature as I have copied her. “If I had wished to modify what I saw and to make it more beautiful, I should have produced nothing good.” An instant later he continued: “I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances. “But, after all, the only principle in Art is to copy what you see. Dealers in æsthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal. There is no recipe for improving nature. “The only thing is to _see_. “Oh, doubtless a mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art; because he really looks without _seeing_, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character. But the profession of artist is not meant for the mediocre, and to them the best counsels will never succeed in giving talent. “The artist, on the contrary, _sees_; that is to say, that his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of Nature. “That is why the artist has only to trust to his eyes.” [Illustration: STUDY By Rodin Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ] [Illustration: STUDY By Rodin Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ] CHAPTER II TO THE ARTIST ALL IN NATURE IS BEAUTIFUL In Rodin’s great atelier at Meudon stands a cast of that statuette, so magnificently ugly, which the great sculptor wrought upon the text of Villon’s poem, _La Belle Heaulmière_. The courtesan, once radiant with youth and grace, is now repulsive with age and decrepitude. Once proud of her beauty, she is now filled with shame at her ugliness. “Ha, vieillesse felonne et fière, Pourquoi m’as tu si tôt abattue? Qui me tient que je ne me fière (frappe) Et qu’à ce coup je ne me tue!”[1] Footnote 1: