From the Parthenon ] “Ah! my dear Gsell,” he said, throwing me a glance of irony, “if I have expressed certain feelings in my works, it is utterly useless for me to try to put them into words, for I am not a poet, but a sculptor, and they ought to be easily read in my statues; if not, I might as well not have experienced the feelings.” “You are right; it is for the public to discover them. So I am going to tell you all the mystery that I have found in your inspiration. You will tell me if I have seen rightly. It seems to me that what has especially interested you in humanity is that strange uneasiness of the soul bound to the body. “In all your statues there is the same impulse of the spirit towards the ideal, in spite of the weight and the cowardice of the flesh. “In your _Saint John the Baptist_, a heavy, almost gross body is strained, uplifted by a divine mission which outruns all earthly limits. In your _Bourgeois de Calais_, the soul enamoured of immortality drags the hesitant body to its martyrdom, while it seems to cry the words, ‘Thou tremblest, vile flesh!’ “In your _Penseur_, meditation, in its terrible effort to embrace the absolute, contracts the athletic body, bends it, crushes it. In your _Baiser_, the bodies tremble as though they felt, in advance, the impossibility of realizing that indissoluble union desired by their souls. In your _Balzac_, genius, haunted by gigantic visions, shakes the sick body, dooms it to insomnia, and condemns it to the labor of a galley-slave. Am I right, master?” “I do not contradict you,” Rodin answered, stroking his long beard thoughtfully. “And in your busts, even more perhaps, you have shown this impatience of the spirit against the chains of matter. Almost all recall the lines of the poet: “‘Ainsi qu’en s’envolant l’oiseau courbe la branche, Son âme avait brisé son corps!’[6] Footnote 6: See page 251. “You have represented all the writers with the head bent, as if beneath the weight of their thoughts. As for your artists, they gaze straight at nature, but they are haggard because their reverie draws them far beyond what they see, far beyond all they can express. [Illustration: THE KISS By Rodin ] “That bust of a woman at the Musée du Luxembourg, perhaps the most beautiful that you have carved, bows and vacillates as if the soul were seized with giddiness upon plunging into the abyss of dreams. “To sum it up, your busts often recall Rembrandt’s portraits, for the Dutch master has also made plain this call of the infinite, by lighting the brow of his personages by a light which falls from above.” “To compare me with Rembrandt, what sacrilege!” Rodin cried quickly. “To Rembrandt, the Colossus of art! Think of it, my friend! Let us bow before Rembrandt, and never set any one beside him!