Carried away by this marvelous technic, the spirit of the visitor succumbs; it follows this ascending movement of the door-posts, to lose itself in the sorrowful dream sculptured on the tympanum. On the panel writhe the clusters of human figures, the eddies of the multitude of damned souls pursued by the rage of the elements, by the devouring tongues of the infernal fire, by the frozen waters, by the wind that tears them and stings them. "It is," says the eminent art critic Gustave Jeffroy, in the most beautiful pages that have been consecrated to a description of this work, "the dizzy whirl, the falling through space, the groveling on the face of the earth of a whole wretched humanity obstinately persisting in living and suffering, bruised and wounded in its flesh, saddened in its soul, crying aloud its griefs, harshly laughing through its tears, chanting its breathless fears, its sickly joys, its ecstatic sorrows." The genius of Rodin became intoxicated with all the resources of his art. Master of a technic of the first order, he delighted in every kind of effect, arranging them as a great symphonist arranges the instruments of an immense orchestra. Low-relief, half-relief, high-relief, and sculpture in the round, he omitted none. He did not yield to the literary temptation. At the height of his fever of invention he was circumspect, measured, guided by his knowledge as a modeler. The poet thinks, but the carver speaks; he speaks justly, he speaks admirably, because he uses only his own true and personal language, which he knows from the ground up. That is the whole secret of the way in which this man inflames our soul and subjugates our imagination. Two principal notes, two motives form, above the whirlwind of the infernal fires, a resting-place for the eye troubled by so much vehemence: one, in the midst of the tympanum, is the figure of Dante. It is Dante, but it is even more the eternal poet. Seated, leaning over the abyss of suffering, thrilled with anguish, he seems to seek in the very depths of the pit itself the word of infinite pity that will deliver this sorrowful humanity. Higher yet, above his bowed head, rising suddenly from the frame and splayed in a large protuberance, a group of three entwined figures crowns and completes the brow. With the same despairing gesture they point to the multitude of the damned. One does not know what these shuddering beings are, but they have the sweetness of angels; at once we seem to hear their lips murmur the words of the grand Florentine, "_Lasciate ogni speranza_"; but across their forms, their compassionate forms, their fraternal forms, one feels passing a tremor of love and pity. Far from condemning, their clasped hands offer to the sad wreckage of fatality that writhes at their feet a sign, a unique sign, the sign of good-will of pity. * * * * *