Rodin’s Balzac as one studies the gigantic head emerging from the [Illustration: INTERIÉUR D’ATELIER AVEC LE GROUPE DES “BOURGEOIS DE CALAIS”] drapery as the author lifts his eyes on the comedy of life. In 1882 appeared simultaneously “St. Jean préchant” (“St. John the Baptist preaching”) and “The Creation of Man”; and down till 1885 the busts of Jean Paul Laurens, Carrier-Belleuse, Victor Hugo, Antonin Proust, Dalou, were exhibited at the Champs de Mars. To subsequent exhibitions were sent busts of Puvis de Chavannes, “Le Cariatide,” “La Danaïde,” “La Pensée,” monument to Victor Hugo, the “Balzac,” “Le Baiser,” “L’Ève,” and the busts of Falguière and Rochefort. In the Salon of 1889 was exhibited the group known as _Les Bourgeois de Calais_, ordered by Calais, and which, cast in bronze, stands to-day on the marketplace of that town. This piece, which has not its compeer, commemorates the heroism of six of the city’s citizens in the days when England was France’s conqueror. Froissart with characteristically simple pathos tells the story. Calais, taken by the English, was destined to destruction, but King Edward offered to spare the populace on the condition that six notable bourgeois should come forth to him bare-headed, bare-footed, ropes round their necks, and the city’s keys in their hands. “I shall do with them according to my good pleasure”--which good pleasure, as the world knows, was to grant pardon and safe _convoi_, at the plea of the gracious Queen Philippa. But they have no dream of pardon, these men, who one after another seem again to pursue their expiatory way for us across the ages. The grateful people of the town have bathed their naked feet with tears of adoration and farewell, and, devoted to probable death and to sure humiliation, they are before us. History has kept the names of four: Eustache de St. Pierre, Jean d’Aire, Jacques and Pierre de Wissant. On their faces are depicted all things save the sense of defeat. In the drawn visages, convulsed hands, in the bent and defiant attitude, are pride, hauteur, grief, resolution. The wasted forms bear the marks of siege, privation, hunger, and anxiety, but there is no trace of submission in the mediæval vicarious offering. Old age is here, passive in a moment of sublime renunciation; youth, rebellious at this demand of Fate; middle life, desperate in tense despair. These figures are real and human; this is modern realism with classic delineation. Verse or prose, brush or pencil, could not, line for line, have caught the story better and told it more expressively. The mass loves a work of art that tells a tale, and here [Illustration: “LE PENSEUR”] the layman and the most difficult symbolist may alike enjoy. A narrative is told, and Art, in the mode of recount, is elevated. [Illustration: BEAU TORSE]