CHAPTER XI AT THE LOUVRE Several days later, Rodin, putting his promise into execution, asked me to accompany him to the Musée du Louvre. We were no sooner before the antiques than he showed by his happy air that he was among old friends. “How many times,” he said, “have I come here when I was not more than fifteen years old! I had a violent longing at first to be a painter. Color attracted me. I often went upstairs to admire the Titians and Rembrandts. But, alas! I hadn’t enough money to buy canvases and tubes of color. To copy the antiques, on the contrary, I needed only paper and pencils. So I was forced to work in the lower rooms, and there such a passion for sculpture seized me that I could think of nothing else.” As I listened to Rodin while he told of his long study of the antique, I thought of the injustice done him by those false classicists who have accused him of being an insurgent against tradition. Tradition! It is this pretended revolutionary who, in our own day, has known it best and respected it most! He led me to the room full of casts and, pointing out the _Diadumenes_ by Polycletus, the original of which is in the British Museum, he said: “You can observe here the four directions that I indicated the other day in my clay statuette. Just examine the left side of this statue: the shoulder is slightly forward, the hip is back; again the knee is forward, the foot is back; and thence a gentle undulation of the whole results. [Illustration: DIADUMENES By Polyclitus ] “Now notice the balance of the levels—the level of the shoulders lower towards the right, the level of the hips lower towards the left. Note that the plumb-line passing through the neck falls on the inner ankle bone of the right foot; note the free poise of the left leg. Finally, view in profile the convexity of the back of the statue, in form like a =C=.” Rodin repeated this demonstration with a number of other antiques. Leaving the casts, he led me to the wonderful torso of Periboëtos by Praxiteles. “Here the direction of the shoulders is towards the left, direction of the hips towards the right—level of the right shoulder higher, level of the left hip higher.” Then, passing to less theoretic impressions: “How charming!” he cried. “This young torso, without a head, seems to smile at the light and at the spring, better than eyes and lips could do.” Then we reached the Venus of Milo. “Behold the marvel of marvels! Here you find an exquisite rhythm very like that in the statue which we have been admiring; but something of thought as well; for here we no longer find the form of the =C=; on the contrary, the body of this goddess bends slightly forward as in Christian sculpture. Yet there is nothing restless or tormented here. This work is the expression of the greatest antique inspiration; it is voluptuousness regulated by restraint; it is the joy of life cadenced, moderated by reason.