These principles of art were first pointed out to me not by a celebrated sculptor, or by an authorized teacher, but by a comrade in the workshop, a humble artisan, a little plasterer from the neighborhood of Blois called Constant Simon. We worked together at a decorator's. I was quite at the beginning of my career, earning six francs a day. Our models were leaves and flowers, which we picked in the garden. I was carving a capital when Constant Simon said to me: "You don't go about that correctly. You make all your leaves flatwise. Turn them, on the contrary, with the point facing you. Execute them in depth and not in relief. Always work in that manner, so that a surface will never seem other than the termination of a mass. Only thus can you achieve success in sculpture." I understood at once. Since then I have discovered many other things, but that rule has remained my absolute basis. Constant Simon was only an obscure workman, but he possessed the principles and a little of the genius of the great ornamentists who worked at the châteaux of the Loire. On the St. Michel fountain in Paris there are very beautifully carved decorations, rich and at the same time graceful, which were made by the hand of this little modeler, who knew far more than all the professors of esthetics. Such was the purpose the workshops of old served. The apprentice passed successively through all the stages and became acquainted with all the secrets of his handicraft. He began by sweeping the studio, and that first taught him care and patience, which are the essential virtues of a workman. He posed, he served as model for his comrades. The master in turn worked before him among his students. He heard his companions discuss their art, he benefited by the discoveries that they communicated to one another. He found himself faced every day by those unforeseen difficulties which go to make an artist till the moment when the artist is sufficiently capable to master his difficulties. Alternately, they were both teacher and companion, and they conveyed to one another the science of the ancients. What have we to-day in place of those splendid institutions which developed character and intelligence simultaneously? Schools at which the students think only of obtaining a prize, not attained by close study, but by flattering the professors. The professors themselves, without any deep attachment for their academies, come hurriedly, overburdened by official duties and all sorts of work; weighed down by perfunctory obligations, they correct the students' papers hastily, and hurriedly return to their regular occupation.