I was once asked to select a splendid artistic picture 'to my taste,' one fit to occupy a place of honor in a salon rich in furnishings. The one asking was a merchant friend who had made abundant money in the last war. When the time came for him to shake off the dust of gold and wash his hands of the filth of 'banknotes,' he saw fit to bestow upon himself, his family, and his house an appearance befitting the class to which he had suddenly risen. I neglected the request at first, as is my habit on most occasions. My friend repeated the request, then pressed it with great insistence. So I copied out for him, from one of the books on art, a picture of the statue 'The Thinker' by Auguste Rodin, set a fitting frame around it, and carried it to him on an evening visit. He received me with the greatest warmth, all the more since he had glimpsed under my arm a wrapped object which he did not doubt was the picture he had asked for. When I handed it to him his ardor rose, and he began undoing the paper wrapping in visible delight, saying:

— At last... by God, had you been bringing it to me from the Louvre you would not have kept me waiting all this while.

His ardor, however, soon began to subside little by little; the delight vanished from his face, and in its place came a weak, forced smile. That was when the wrapping was fully undone and the picture stood before his eyes: a naked man — and what a man! He might have been a wild beast...!

Our friend began stretching the picture out to arm's length and draw-ing it back again, casting meanwhile one glance at it and another at my face — could I be making sport of him? When he had satisfied himself of the soundness of my intent, he set the picture on the table and settled into the seat opposite, contemplating it from afar:

— In any case, it's not bad, not bad; a pretty picture. No doubt the man who made it is skillful, but... in any case it's not bad. Thanks — thanks, in any case!

Inwardly, and on behalf of Auguste Rodin, I gave thanks for this praise and appreciation! Is not such a testimonial worthy to set the remains of the great genius trembling for joy in his grave!!...

Another visit to our merchant friend came my way some months later. I found no trace of 'The Thinker' in his salon. In its place I found a number of small oil canvases of the kind sold wholesale, at prices that do art's face no credit, and usually unsigned, as though

their makers were ashamed to have them traced to them: sunset scenes, steam and skiffs and pools and trees in strange, garish colors. Then a picture of a laughing woman which I did not doubt had been torn from one of those American calendars distributed free to advertise Pond's cream, or Kolynos toothpaste, or Tangee lipstick. So I smiled. Our friend seemed to sense what was passing through my mind, and went on apologetically:

— I tried hard to persuade my wife to hang the picture of the man you brought me, out of regard for you, but I did not succeed, for my wife is very stubborn. She claimed that the picture of the man is exceedingly ugly and disfigures the look of the salon — to say nothing of the disgust it must arouse in the lady visitors and the gentlemen visitors, and of the shameful slur that placing it here would cast upon her refined taste, which no tongue has ever touched.

I excused my friend, and I excused his wife, and I excused the lady visitors and the gentlemen visitors, without blame or reproach — and I blamed myself. It would have been more fitting to choose for my merchant friend's wife a picture of 'Apollo,' say. And yet, from another side, I am not to blame: did he not ask that the picture be 'to my taste'?

The excuse here is plain. Imagine that a breath of life were blown into the frame of this marble man, so that by something like a miracle he stirred, waking from his cold, eternal meditation; that he then stretched himself and yawned, slipped down from his rock, and rose to stroll among the people in the streets and on the beaches and in the parks and everywhere! That would be enough to raise in the city an overwhelming wave of aversion and disgust — nay, of terror and panic. A strange fancy, impossible of fulfillment, no doubt; but between it and people's notion of art there is a resemblance of close kinship. For most people, finding themselves before some work of art, try to deal with it and pronounce their judgments upon it with the very mentality with which they are accustomed to deal with their daily lives and to judge whatever crosses them there. My merchant friend and his wife, when disgust at the statue of the thinking man crept over them, were measuring this splendid work of art by the plain, ordinary

standards which daily life has laid down and upon which people have agreed among themselves. There is no doubt that any ordinary young woman would refuse for a husband a man possessed of the visage and the coarse frame upon which Rodin fashioned him. Had I exchanged this statue for a statue of Apollo, say, the matter would have gone quite oth-erwise with my friend's wife. Then Apollo might have presided over the salon, won the admiration of the lady visitors and the gentlemen visitors, and gathered to himself all the praise for the taste of the mistress of the house and her husband. Yet this admiration and this praise would remain strangers to art, for their source is a purely sexual feeling with which art has no concern. I would not have it understood from this that sexual feeling is a stranger to art; the bond between them is in truth broad and deep-rooted. What I wish to say is that everything in nature possesses, besides its other faces, a particular artistic face which only those who lead a high life of the mind can perceive.

And now, after this long preamble, I find I have said nothing yet of Auguste Rodin's masterpiece! God forgive my merchant friend and his wife — talk of them has squandered our time for nothing. Yet in truth I am not one of those who love the commentaries and studies spun around artistic masterpieces, for most of the time they screen off the aesthetic unity of the work of art. Let it suffice us now, then, before Auguste Rodin's masterpiece, to contemplate it, and contemplate it in silence — in the deepest silence there can be — and to surrender ourselves to the musings that carry us through it, as by magic and legend, beyond the generations and the ages: and behold, we stand before a strange and wondrous creature among creatures, whose name is Man; and behold, he has set himself apart upon a rock. Above him towers the sky with its constellations; around him the winds rage, the sea heaves, volcanoes burst forth, the beasts of prey contend; day crowds upon night and night crowds upon day, and the universe whispers its secrets — everything around him is secrets. He himself is a secret: whence did he come? Whither is he bound? Who made him? And why? And how? And what is this that surrounds him? Secrets! But he does not despair; it is as though he knew that there is noth-ing in nature impossible to know. So he thinks, and thinks deeply, and he will go on thinking forever, laying open the universe secret after secret, until he takes this nature captive.