After his decision was made, however, his departure had to be postponed until various duties were fulfilled. The Shaw and Logan monuments had first to be completed and unveiled, and a number of smaller commissions had to be executed. From the beginning of his work upon the Shaw memorial there had been bitter opposition upon the part of his friends to the symbolical figure hovering above Colonel Shaw and his men, but the sculptor clung to his original conception with great tenacity. Saint-Gaudens' best friend, Bion, a Parisian sculptor and critic, whose opinion he valued highly, had never liked the idea of this figure. Just before Bion's death he received a photograph of the monument as finished in the clay, and he wrote a long letter to Saint-Gaudens, complaining that the angel was as superfluous as a figure of Simplicity would be, floating in the air above the bent figures in Millet's "Gleaners," and concluding: "I had no need of your 'nom de Dieu' allegory on the ceiling. Your negroes marching in step and your Colonel leading them told me enough. Your priestess merely bores me as she tries to impress upon me the beauty of their action." [Illustration: CARYATID FOR THE VANDERBILT HOUSE] Concerning this letter of Bion's, Saint-Gaudens wrote: "The Players, New York, Jan. 26th, 1897 "Dear ---- "I meant to write you at length tonight but I started with a letter to Bion which has kept me busy till now, 11 P.M. It is in reply to the one from him that I enclose, in which at the end he says a word of you. "I am not disturbed by his dislike of my figure. It is because it does not look well in the photograph. If the figure in itself looked well, he would have liked it, I know, and notwithstanding his admirable comparison with the Millet I still think that a figure, if well done in that relation to the rest of the scheme, is a fine thing to do. The Greeks and Romans did it finely in their sculpture. After all it's the way the thing's done that makes it right or wrong, that's about the only creed I have in art. However his letter is interesting, although very sad, dear old boy. [Illustration: DETAIL FROM THE SHAW MEMORIAL, SHOWING THE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE FULL FACE, AS IN THE FIRST DESIGN] [Illustration: _Copley print, copyrighted by Curtis and Cameron_ DETAIL FROM THE SHAW MEMORIAL, SHOWING THE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE WITH THE HEAD TURNED MORE IN PROFILE, AS IN THE FINAL EXECUTION] "All of the Shaw is out of the studio. They cast the Logan on Monday and I am working like the devil on the Sherman. I've found precisely the model I wished, just his size, the same pose of the head and the same thinness; a Milanese peasant who poses like a rock. Next week I commence the nude of the Victory from a South Carolinian girl with a figure like a goddess.