figures become more independent of the subject, more personally invented by the artist, and at the foot we find "women damned," such as Baudelaire conceived, amid characters from heathen mythology. [Illustration: NEREIDS (Group at the base of the Victor Hugo monument.)] It may thus be said that, although, perhaps, the celebrated doorway may never be finished, it is a storehouse of Rodin's creations. It stands by him as a theme for inspirations, and he brings into it a whole category of thoughts and works, never troubling himself about the architecture or the actual scheme. He will be for ever improvising some little figure, shaping the notation of some feeling, idea, or form, and this he plants in his door, studies it against the other figures, then takes it out again, and if need be, breaks it up and uses the fragments for other attempts. Many of these little figures have developed into important separate groups. Rodin is ruled primarily by the need to create and to satisfy an irresistible vocation; he cares little what may be the ultimate transformation of his inventions, and his sculpture is, furthermore, so conceived that it may be executed on a large scale or a small; this is indeed so much the case that it is often impossible to judge from a photograph what are the dimensions. [Illustration: SHADES (For the top of "The Gate of Hell".)] _The Gate of Hell_ might therefore better be called "the Pandemonium," or some quite other name. If it were to be carried out it could not contain all the figures destined for it by the artist. There they stand, innumerable, ranged on shelves beside the rough model of the door, representing the entire evolution of Rodin's inspiration, and forming what I call, with his consent, "the diary of his life as a sculptor." To enumerate these figures and groups would take too long; suffice to say that the larger part of Rodin's small marbles and bronzes are but completions of these sketches, and that on account of the essentially decorative character of the outlines and the intense originality of the proportion and balance of the figures, they can be conceived either as statuettes or as lifesized works. Such as it is, _The Gate of Hell_ is the plan of a piece of work unique in the sculpture of modern days, a plan slowly elaborated, and of which every detail has been foreseen and analysed for years. No one has dared to undertake so audacious an assemblage of figures upon such a scheme, and the scheme is present to Rodin in its entirety. He by no means forgets the decorative effect nor the harmonious aspects, the concords that the gate should have, and if ever Government should require him to deliver his work he would be able to do so without delay. Twenty years in the studio have matured it in his mind. The work that Dante inspired has assumed a more general significance. Low-relief, high-relief, figures standing free, groups, single figures, all the styles of sculpture are