In addition to the lessons of this little school, where from eight to twelve young Rodin learned the elements of drawing, and later on of modelling, copied drawings in crayons and reliefs in the Louis XVI. style, he went twice a week to Barye's classes at the Jardin des Plantes; "Barye," he says, "did not teach us much; he was always worried and tired when he came, and always told us that it was very good." But Rodin, together with Barye's son and some other lads, had arranged a sort of studio for themselves in a cellar of the museum, making seats of tree-trunks, and already attempting sculpture. At six in the morning he used to go to draw animals, then he copied the anatomical objects in the Museum. He remembers that, being too poor to buy an anatomy of the horse, he copied it piece by piece. After Barye's class, or the classes of the Rue de l'École de Médecine, he would lunch on a bit of bread and some chocolate and hasten to the Louvre, and in the evenings he would go to draw and study at the Gobelins. Then he worked for a maker of ornaments, since it was necessary to earn a living. From fourteen to seventeen years old Rodin led this fevered existence. "In those three years," he has often repeated to me, "I came to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of my art, and the rhythm of animals. I remember that a companion of those days,[1] of whom I have since lost sight, made me see, in a couple of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret of the plans of a figure. That lesson has influenced my whole life. As for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop I earned a scanty wage, I long deplored being constrained to do so, but I have since thought with affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty in ornament as in the face."