RODIN'S WORK FROM 1895 TO 1898--SMALL GROUPS--THE STATUE OF "BALZAC" --THE INCIDENT OF THE SOCIÉTÉ DES GENS DE LETTRES--THE "TECHNIQUE" OF THE "BALZAC"--RODIN'S IDEAS UPON MODELLING AND COMPOSITION--HIS OPINIONS ABOUT THE GREEKS, THE GOTHIC STYLE, CLASSICISM, AND MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS--RODIN'S "ANTIQUE" PERIOD. The year 1896 was occupied by the continuation of work for the Hugo monument. The _Muse of Anger_ and the _Muse of the Inna' Voice_ were brought to their full completion. In addition to these Rodin made a very fine head of _Minerva,_ in marble, with a silver helmet; a statue of a _Conqueror_, holding a statue of _Victory;_ and two groups--_The Poet and the Life of Contemplation_ (for M. Fenaille, the faithful admirer, who was, at a later date, to publish his sketches) and _The Eternal Idol,_ a marvel of inspiration. A young naked woman is in a half-sitting posture, her head bent, her gaze lost in a dream. A man kneeling before her, his arms behind him and his desire restrained, puts his head gently forward and kisses the idol beneath the left breast over the heart, with mute fervour, and with a mystic, amorous concentration of his whole being. Rarely does sculpture allow of so much pulsating life and so much psychological emotion united to plastic perfection and originality of arrangement. From 1897 date the marble group of the _Women Bathing,_ the last studies for the _Balzac,_ and the studies for the _Monument to President Sarmiento_, a statue upon a pedestal in high-relief. Small groups in marble and in bronze are a form of which Rodin is fond. He has been led to devote himself largely to them on account of _The Gate of Hell,_ the dimensions of which necessitated small figures. Moreover, Rodin reserves this form of art for certain categories of works that have a character of passion and intimacy. It should be possible to pass easily round them, to lean over them, almost to touch them and move them about; one should be able to live with them, as one cannot do with large figures meant to be looked at from below. The happy form of the small sculptured block, which the eighteenth century had employed to so much advantage, allows this constant communion of the spectator and the work of art. Rodin, who executes his bigger figures in so large a style, reserves for these a style that is minute but never mannered. The outlines remain large, so much so, indeed, that the work would always bear an enlarged scale; but the modelling is wrought with an almost caressing touch and with a strange love of form. Here the rough sculptor, so Gothic in his austerity, fingers the marble with the care and the delicacy of a lover; he reveals himself as a fervent adorer of smooth, womanly flesh; he plays with the subtlest variations of light upon the inflexion of marble surfaces, and the man who is reproached with caring for nothing but "character" and with despising "beauty" creates arms, necks, knees, and bosoms of exquisite perfection. His