He tells of his first art teacher who did not try to teach. He kept still and rejoiced when the boy went mad over the canvasses of Delacroix. From that man, he declares, I learned the essentials of creation. I have found another reason for his devotion to flowers. In his impressionable boyhood he became companion of a famous botanist, Clavand. This man was fascinated by the imperceptible, unsteady boundary line which separates flower-life from human-life. In the plastic arts, Clavand could appreciate both the serenity of Greece and the riotous Middle Age. He loved Delacroix just as Redon did. He kept telling Redon, the boy, of the intensity of life, the vital irradiation of the canvasses of Delacroix. He compared them to the plays of Shakespeare, because they held the same quality. In stored up depth of life they were Elizabethan. Redon expresses belief that there is no such thing as art until pressure of idea, vision, force then form speech. Remy de Gourmont applies the word _metaphore_ to the paintings of Redon. They live by logic of imagination. His reflections are always illuminating. Speechless nature, (plants, flowers), have normal, secret life-laws which landscape painters must feel to express. There is an art of design freed from burden of details. In life there is suffering. Art is made to console. He insists Rembrandt created _clair-obscur_ just as Phidias created _line_. New art, outside law and vision of pagan Greece, must derive from Rembrandt. He thinks that the power to put into a work of art more significance than the creator suspects is done by them whose hearts are perfectly true, they who hold in the soul something greater than art. This means it is the rich heritage of them who have lived. Redon remarked: “When I am alone I can love the highways.” Tu Fu, a poet of Eighth Century China, sang: “I find that I like to walk alone.” Thinking, evidently, is a thing outside of time. Redon says that with God, he can enjoy natural things. I prefer rough ways, uncultivated spaces, untouched by the human hand. I even love black woods when they are sad. I love wild storms, abundant rain, cold, snow and the frost. I love these harsh things men grumble over. They even keep a language which enchants me. Long ago Redon felt sensitively the coming of the dangerous, scientifically minded New World; an age dry of emotion. He exclaimed in words touched with both grief and fear: “Plastic art is dead, because the wind of the infinite has blown upon it.” That is exactly what science will prove to be; _the wind of the infinite_. Somewhere else I recall, he declares that the superiority of the Christ is the fact that all loved Him without argument. Over the memory of man there floated the candor of His smile, and the fact that He could love every one who approached Him. This makes me remember a poet’s portrait of Christ, drawn by Leconte de Lisle. It is too lovely ever to forget: