See page 249. The sculptor has followed the poet step by step. The old hag, more shrivelled than a mummy, mourns her physical decay. Bent double, crouching on her haunches, she gazes despairingly upon her breasts so pitiably shrunken, upon her hideously wrinkled body, upon her arms and legs more knotty than vine stocks. “Quand je pense, las! au bon temps, Quelle fus, quelle devenue, Quand me regarde toute nue Et je me vois si très changée. Pauvre, sêche, maigre, menue, Je suis presque tout enragée! Qu’est devenue ce front poli, Ces cheveux blonds.... Ces gentes épaules menues, Petite tetins, hanches charnues, Elevées, propres, faictisse (faites à souhait) A tenir d’amoureuses lices; C’est d’humaine beauté l’issue! Les bras courts et les mains contraictes (contractées), Les épaules toutes bossue. Mamelles, quoi! toutes retraites (dessechées) Telles les hanches et que les tettes! Quant aux cuisses, Cuisses ne sont plus, mais cuissettes Grivelées comme saucisses!”[2] Footnote 2: See page 249. [Illustration: THE OLD COURTESAN By Rodin ] [Illustration: THE MAGDALENE By Donatello ] The sculptor does not fall below the poet in realism. On the contrary, his work, in the horror which it inspires, is perhaps even more impressive than the truculent verses of Maître Villon. The skin hangs in flaccid folds upon the skeleton; the ribs stand out beneath the parchment that covers them, and the whole figure seems to totter, to tremble, to shrivel, to shrink away. Yet from this spectacle, at once grotesque and heartrending, a great sorrow breathes. For what we have before us is the infinite distress of a poor foolish soul which, enamoured of eternal youth and beauty, looks on helpless at the ignominious disgrace of its fleshly envelope; it is the antithesis of the spiritual being which demands endless joy and of the body which wastes away, decays, ends in nothingness. The substance perishes, the flesh dies, but dreams and desires are immortal. This is what Rodin has wished to make us understand. And I do not think that any other artist has ever pictured old age with such savage crudity, except one. In the Baptistery at Florence you see upon an altar a strange statue by Donatello—an old woman naked, or at least draped only in the long, thin hair which clings foully to her ruined body. It is Saint Magdalene in the desert, bowed with age, offering to God the cruel mortifications to which she subjects her body as a punishment for the care which she formerly lavished upon it.