When the statue came from the workshop of the finisher, the sculptor did not recognize it. He had expected his model to be reproduced on a less grand scale, and the difference of proportion rendered it not easy to be known again. At such a result Cabuchet experienced one of those counter-blows which have made certain young artists of twenty grow old in a quarter of an hour, and only those who have tried to realize an ideal can perfectly understand such emotion. Benvenuto and Palissy in similar moments were taken with fevers which brought them to the very portals of the tomb. Sigalon, noticing his picture of Athalie compromised by difference of light, saw his hair turn gray in two minutes. Cabuchet had no less trouble, and the wonder is he escaped a similar shock; he withstood it, however, and, seeing no other means, he did what any valiant artist would have done in his place; he took his chisel and mallet, and in the style of Michael Angelo and Puget he attacked the marble. Each blow knocked off a piece, but each blow soothed the heart of the sculptor, for in reducing his statue he re-established it in its first form, and restored its true physiognomy. {208} Cabuchet has devoted a year to such labor. For a whole year he has worked with chisel and mallet, seeking the form, the movement, the life; and finding, little by little, this form, movement, and life at the end of his tools. He played a dangerous game; the first stroke of the hammer could have destroyed his work. Driven to a corner, the artist acted as a great captain. He risked all to gain all. Fortune, which encourages audacity, or rather the good God who sustains energetic and faithful artists, came to his aid; and at the end of a year Cabuchet saw his statue re-created by his chisel, and become truly and doubly the daughter of his brain and of his hands. He gained more than one wrinkle at this task and more than one white hair. According to his own expression, he _sweated many shirts_. But he forgot difficulties and anxieties when he saw the long dreamed of figure, the ideal of his days and nights, realized and looming before him! VI.