At the time of the affair of "The Age of Bronze" there was at the head of the ministry of fine arts, an under-secretary of state named Edmond Turquet. To him fell the task of deciding in the last resort the case of Rodin. M. Edmond Turquet was a brilliant lawyer who had become _procureur_ under the empire, which did not altogether qualify him for the part of director of fine arts under the republic. In the field of art he knew no more than any one else, Rodin says; but he was a very fair-minded man, and his honesty had the effect of quickly straightening out the affair of the sculptor. In his genuine desire to atone for the wrong done to Rodin in the eyes of public opinion he not only offered to obtain for him a position in the porcelain factory at Sèvres, in order to assure him a regular livelihood, but ordered from him a great ornamental piece, a door destined for the Palais des Arts Décoratifs. In addition, by a special privilege created in favor of artists under Louis XIV,--a privilege the traditions of which the French Government has happily perpetuated,--M. Turquet granted Rodin a good studio in the Dépôt des Marbres, so that he could execute his order. "And what will you represent on that door?" enquired the under-secretary of state. "I am sure I don't know," replied the artist. "But I shall make a quantity of little figures; then no one will say that they are casts taken from the life." Thus we find him at Sèvres, a ceramist; he has carried on so many different trades that he succeeds marvelously with this one. It was his task to decorate vases of delicate clay; he modeled light bas-reliefs, representations of mythological scenes, idylls. Nymphs, cupids, fauns, evoked by his miraculously delicate fingers, were born out of the milky, transparent material, bringing back to life the flowery graces of the drawing-room art of the eighteenth century, the dainty elegances of the wax figures of Clodion, but with a graver sense of the mystery of nature and of love. Unfortunately, when these vases left the hand of the master they were overladen with hideous ornaments in the style of Louis-Philippe. Moreover, the officials at the head of the factory did not like them. They were carried up to the attics, they were left lying about on the floor, in the secret hope of seeing them broken by the feet of some careless or ill-willed workman.