I quoted these high-minded words of Emerson's to Rodin at the time of the _Balzac_ incident. "They are," I said to him, "the very epigraph of your whole life." Nor have they ceased to epitomise the man and the artist. From the time of the _Balzac_ Rodin's work has proceeded very regularly and on the same principles. The _Victor Hugo_ is being finished in marble, in its two versions, in the studio of the Rue de l'Université. The group in which Hugo, his extended arm commanding silence of the waves, sits surrounded by Muses is almost ready; the other, in which Hugo, dreamily listening to the counsels of Iris, stands on the edge of a rock washed by waves, amid which Nereids are entwined, is not quite so far advanced. _The Gate of Hell_ is ready to receive its finally chosen and ordered figures. In the Salon of 1902 Rodin exhibited the three _Shades_ from its summit, inspired by the celebrated _Lasciate ogni speransa._ In 1900 Rodin only showed two or three old productions at the Universal Exhibition, because his work was collected in a special pavilion at the Rond-point de l'Alma, the concession of which pavilion was made uncomfortable for him by his colleagues, so much so that the artist was obliged to remove on the very day of closing, with less delay and consideration allowed to him than to the most unimportant industrial exhibitor. This special exhibition was, nevertheless, a great international success for Rodin, and the amazing development of his fame may be said to date from it. Before 1900 Rodin stood in the position of an exceptional artist, celebrated but envied, isolated and challenged, whose relations with the Government were strained, whom a minority upheld, but on whom the official world looked coldly. Since that time his eminence is so firmly established that he now holds the rank that Puvis de Chavannes held in the estimation of all artists. His triumphant journey to Prague (1901-2), London's enthusiastic reception, and Rodin's recent election to be President of the Society over which Whistler presided, have finally given him the acknowledgment so long looked for. In 1903 his marble bust of Hugo aroused enthusiasm, and at the Salon of 1904 the colossal bronze _Thinker_ had a most flattering reception, and disarmed the last of his former detractors. A woman's bust accompanied _The Thinker_ to the Salon. Rodin, who does portraits now and again, had previously made an admirable one of Mme. Fenaille, wife of the art-patron who had been of such great service to him; and he is attempting a curious variation of it. He has just finished a bust of a helmeted Minerva, as impressive as a Donatello, and this, too, is a portrait.