I had just commenced in my studio, in the Avenue de Clichy, a large group, the inspiration for which I had gathered from the sad history of an old woman whom I often saw at nightfall in the Baie des Trépassés. One day I went up to her wishing to speak to her, but I was so terrified by her aspect of madness that I rushed off at once, and the guardian told me her history. She was the mother of five sons—all sailors. Two had been killed by the Germans in 1870, and three had been drowned. She had brought up the little son of her youngest boy, always keeping him far from the sea and teaching him to hate the water. She had never left the little lad; but he became so sad that he was really ill, and he said he was dying because he wanted to see the sea. “Well, make haste and get well,” said the grandmother tenderly, “and we will go and visit the sea together.” Two days later the child was better, and the grandmother left the valley in the company of her little grandson to go and see the ocean, the grave of her three sons. It was a November day. A low sky hung over the sea limiting the horizon. The child jumped with joy. He ran, gamboled, and sang for happiness when he saw all this living water. The grandmother sat on the sand and hid her tearful eyes in her two trembling hands; then, suddenly, struck by the silence, she looked up in terror. There, in front of her she saw a boat drifting, and in the boat her boy, her little lad of eight years old, who was laughing right merrily, paddling as well as he could with one oar that he could hardly hold, and crying out: “I am going to see what there is behind the mist and I will come back.” He never came back. And the following day they found the poor old woman talking low to the waves which came and bathed her feet. She came every day to the water’s edge, throwing in the bread which kindly folk gave her and saying to the waves: “You must carry that to the little lad.” This touching narrative had remained in my memory. I can still see the tall old woman with her brown cape and hood. I worked feverishly at the group. It seemed to me now that I was destined to be a sculptor and I began to despise my theater. I went there only when I was compelled by my duties and I left it as soon as possible. I had made several designs, none of which pleased me. Just when I was going to throw down the last one in discouragement, the painter Georges Clairin, who came to see me, begged me not to do so. And my good friend, Mathieu Mensiner, who was a man of talent, also joined his voice against the destruction of my design.