As I was turning away I caught sight of a copy in bronze of the bust of Berthelot. Rodin made it only a year before the death of the great chemist. The great scholar rests in the knowledge of his work accomplished. He meditates. He is alone, face to face with himself; alone, face to face with the crumbling of ancient faiths; alone before nature, some of whose secrets he has penetrated, but which remains so immensely mysterious; alone at the edge of the infinite abyss of the skies; and his tormented brow, his lowered eyes, are filled with melancholy. This fine head is like the emblem of modern intelligence, which, satiated with knowledge, weary of thought, ends by demanding “What is the use?” All the busts which I had been admiring and about which my host had been talking now grouped themselves in my mind, and they appeared to me as a rich treasure of documents upon our epoch. “If Houdon,” I said, “has written memoirs of the eighteenth century, you have written those of the end of the nineteenth. Your style is more harsh, more violent than that of your predecessor, your expressions are less elegant, but more natural and more dramatic, if I may say so. “The scepticism which in the eighteenth century was distinguished and full of raillery has become, in you, rough and sharp. Houdon’s people were more sociable, yours are more self-centred. Those of Houdon criticised the abuses of a _régime_, yours seem to question the value of human life itself and to feel the anguish of unrealized desires.” Rodin answered, “I have done my best. I have not lied; I have never flattered my contemporaries. My busts have often displeased because they were always very sincere. They certainly have one merit—veracity. Let it serve them for beauty!” CHAPTER VIII THOUGHT IN ART One morning, finding myself with Rodin in his atelier, I stopped before the cast of one of his most impressive works. It is a young woman whose writhing body seems a prey to some mysterious torment. Her head is bent low, her lips and her eyes are closed, and you would think she slept, did not the anguish in her face betray the conflict of her spirit. The most surprising thing in the figure, however, is that it has neither arms nor legs. It would seem that the sculptor in a moment of discontent with himself had broken them off, and you cannot help regretting that the figure is incomplete. I could not refrain from expressing this feeling to my host. “What do you mean?” he cried in astonishment. “Don’t you see that I left it in that state intentionally? My figure represents _Meditation_. That’s why it has neither arms to act nor legs to walk. Haven’t you noticed that reflection, when persisted in, suggests so many plausible arguments for opposite decisions that it ends in inertia?”