Truly Rodin was fortunate: he was born in a chapter of Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris." Destiny preserved the first glances of his artist's eyes from the disenchanting banality of our modern streets. It placed before them, as if to give them a hatred of uniformity, as if to disgust him forever with the misdeeds of the straight line, adopted the world over by the rank and file of contemporary architects,--those congenitally blind and mutilated souls,--a population of houses having a physiognomy and a soul of their own, which, with their sloping roofs, their irregular gables, etch their amusing profiles against the sky and seem to gossip with the birds and the clouds, putting to shame the few regular buildings that have intruded and lost themselves amid this congregation so touched with spirituality. All this Rodin saw; with a child's innocent eye, he absorbed all this fantasy of past ages; he studied the little shops with their low ceilings dating from the period of the gilds; he noted through the tiny panes of their windows the Rembrandtesque effects of shadow and golden light, in which the humblest objects live a life that is full of intimate mystery and familiar charm. About them he saw a people full of life, alert, awake, always in action, always in dispute, unconsciously falling into a thousand beautiful, simple attitudes, the eternal attitudes associated with drinking, eating, sleeping, working, and loving. What admirable, powerful precepts this teaching, without effort, without professors, without pedantry, thus forever imposed upon the memory of the future sculptor! Yes, Rodin there enjoyed a priceless good fortune. As child and young man, his walks and his duties took him incessantly past Notre Dame, the queen of cathedrals, appearing, from the heights of Ste. Geneviève, magnificently seated on the bank of the Seine that devotedly kisses its feet; in front of it, Ste. Etienne-du-Mont, surrounded by convents, with its nave, that treasure of grace bequeathed to us by the Renaissance. There also is the ancient little Roman church of St. Julien-le-Pauvre; and St. Séverin, that sweet relic of Gothic art, about which lies unrolled the old _quartier des truands_, with the rues Galande de la Huchette and de la Parcheminerie, which the pick-axes of the housebreakers are now giving over to the universal ugliness.