THE DEN.
Rodin's countenance, when he entered Mother Arsene's shop, was expressive
of the most simple candor. He leaned his hands on the knob of his
umbrella, and said: "I much regret, my good lady, that I roused you so
early this morning."
"You do not come often enough, my dear sir, for me to find fault with
you."
"How can I help it, my good lady? I live in the country, and only come
hither from time to time to settle my little affairs."
"Talking of that sir, the letter you expected yesterday has arrived this
morning. It is large, and comes from far. Here it is," said the
greengrocer, drawing it from her pocket; "it cost nothing for postage."
"Thank you, my dear lady," said Rodin, taking the letter with apparent
indifference, and putting it into the side-pocket of his great-coat,
which he carefully buttoned over.
"Are you going up to your rooms, sir?"
"Yes, my good, lady."
"Then I will get ready your little provisions," said Mother Arsene; "as
usual, I suppose, my dear sir?"
"Just as usual."
"It shall be ready in the twinkling of an eye, sir."
So saying, the greengrocer took down an old basket; after throwing into
it three or four pieces of turf, a little bundle of wood, and some
charcoal, she covered all this fuel with a cabbage leaf; then, going to
the further end of the shop, she took from a chest a large round loaf,
cut off a slice, and selecting a magnificent radish with the eye of a
connoisseur, divided it in two, made a hole in it, which she filled with
gray salt joined the two pieces together again, and placed it carefully
by the side of the bread, on the cabbage leaf which separated the
eatables from the combustibles. Finally, taking some embers from the
stove, she put them into a little earthen pot, containing ashes, which
she placed also in the basket.
Then, reascending to her top step, Mother Arsene said to Rodin: "Here is
your basket, sir."
"A thousand thanks, my good lady," answered Rodin, and plunging his hand
into the pocket of his trousers, he drew forth eight sous, which he
counted out only one by one to the greengrocer, and said to her, as he
carried off his store: "Presently, when I come down again, I will return
your basket as usual."
"Quite at your service, my dear sir, quite at your service," said Mother
Arsene.
Rodin tucked his umbrella under his left arm, took up the greengrocer's
basket with his right hand, entered the dark passage, crossed the little
court and mounted with light step to the second story of a dilapidated
building; there, drawing a key from his pocket, he opened a door, which
he locked carefully after him. The first of the two rooms which he
occupied was completely unfurnished, as for the second, it is impossible
to imagine a more gloomy and miserable den. Papering so much worn, torn
and faded, that no one could recognize its primitive color, bedecked the
walls. A wretched flock-bed, covered with a moth-fretted blanket; a
stool, and a little table of worm-eaten wood; an earthenware stove, as
cracked as old china; a trunk with a padlock, placed under the bed--such
was the furniture of this desolate hole. A narrow window, with dirty
panes, hardly gave any light to this room, which was almost deprived of
air by the height of the building in front; two old cotton pocket
handkerchiefs, fastened together with pins, and made to slide upon a
string stretched across the window, served for curtains. The plaster of
the roof, coming through the broken and disjointed tiles, showed the
extreme neglect of the inhabitant of this abode. After locking his door,
Rodin threw his hat and umbrella on the bed, placed his basket on the
ground, set the radish and bread on the table, and kneeling down before
his stove, stuffed it with fuel, and lighted it by blowing with vigorous
lungs on the embers contained in his earthen pot.
When, to use the consecrated expression, the stove began to draw, Rodin
spread out the handkerchiefs, which served him for curtains; then,
thinking himself quite safe from every eye, he took from the side-pocket
of his great-coat the letter that Mother Arsene had given him. In doing
so, he brought out several papers and different articles; one of these
papers, folded into a thick and rumpled packet, fell upon the table, and
flew open. It contained a silver cross of the Legion of Honor, black with
time. The red ribbon of this cross had almost entirely lost its original
color. At sight of this cross, which he replaced in his pocket with the
medal of which Faringhea had despoiled Djalma, Rodin shrugged his
shoulders with a contemptuous and sardonic air; then, producing his large
silver watch, he laid it on the table by the side of the letter from
Rome. He looked at this letter with a singular mixture of suspicion and
hope, of fear, and impatient curiosity. After a moment's reflection, he
prepared to unseal the envelope; but suddenly he threw it down again upon
the table, as if, by a strange caprice, he had wished to prolong for a
few minutes that agony of uncertainty, as poignant and irritating as the
emotion of the gambler.
Looking at his watch, Rodin resolved not to open the letter, until the
hand should mark half-past nine, of which it still wanted seven minutes.
In one of those whims of puerile fatalism, from which great minds have
not been exempt, Rodin said to himself: "I burn with impatience to open
this letter. If I do not open it till half-past nine, the news will be
favorable." To employ these minutes, Rodin took several turns up and down
the room, and stood in admiring contemplation before two old prints,
stained with damp and age, and fastened to the wall by rusty nails. The
first of these works of art--the only ornaments with which Rodin had
decorated this hole--was one of those coarse pictures, illuminated with
red, yellow, green, and blue, such as are sold at fairs; an Italian
inscription announced that this print had been manufactured at Rome. It
represented a woman covered with rags, bearing a wallet, and having a
little child upon her knees; a horrible hag of a fortune-teller held in
her hands the hand of the little child, and seemed to read there his
future fate, for these words in large blue letters issued from her mouth:
"Sara Papa" (he shall be Pope).
The second of these works of art, which appeared to inspire Rodin with
deep meditations, was an excellent etching, whose careful finish and
bold, correct drawing, contrasted singularly with the coarse coloring of
the other picture. This rare and splendid engraving, which had cost Rodin
six louis (an enormous expense for him), represented a young boy dressed
in rags. The ugliness of his features was compensated by the intellectual
expression of his strongly marked countenance. Seated on a stone,
surrounded by a herd of swine, that he seemed employed in keeping, he was
seen in front, with his elbow resting on his knee, and his chin in the
palm of his hand. The pensive and reflective attitude of this young man,
dressed as a beggar, the power expressed in his large forehead, the
acuteness of his penetrating glance, and the firm lines of the mouth,
seemed to reveal indomitable resolution, combined with superior
intelligence and ready craft. Beneath this figure, the emblems of the
papacy encircled a medallion, in the centre of which was the head of an
old man, the lines of which, strongly marked, recalled in a striking
manner, notwithstanding their look of advanced age, the features of the
young swineherd. This engraving was entitled THE YOUTH of SIXTUS V.; the
color print was entitled The Prediction.[22]
In contemplating these prints more and more nearly, with ardent and
inquiring eye, as though he had asked for hopes or inspirations from
them, Rodin had come so close that, still standing, with his right arm
bent behind his head, he rested, as it were, against the wall, whilst,
hiding his left hand in the pocket of his black trousers, he thus held
back one of the flaps of his olive great-coat. For some minutes, he
remained in this meditative attitude.
Rodin, as we have said, came seldom to this lodging; according to the
rules of his Order, he had till now lived with Father d'Aigrigny, whom he
was specially charged to watch. No member of the Society, particularly in
the subaltern position which Rodin had hitherto held, could either shut
himself in, or possess an article of furniture made to lock. By this
means nothing interferes with the mutual spy-system, incessantly carried
on, which forms one of the most powerful resources of the Company of
Jesus. It was on account of certain combinations, purely personal to
himself, though connected on some points with the interests of the Order,
that Rodin, unknown to all, had taken these rooms in the Rue Clovis. And
it was from the depths of this obscure den that the socius corresponded
directly with the most eminent and influential personages of the sacred
college. On one occasion, when Rodin wrote to Rome, that Father
d'Aigrigny, having received orders to quit France without seeing his
dying mother, had hesitated to set out, the socius had added, in form of
postscriptum, at the bottom of the letter denouncing to the General of
the Order the hesitation of Father d'Aigrigny:
"Tell the Prince Cardinal that he may rely upon me, but I hope for his
active aid in return."
This familiar manner of corresponding with the most powerful dignitary of
the Order, the almost patronizing tone of the recommendation that Rodin
addressed to the Prince Cardinal, proved that the socius, notwithstanding
his apparently subaltern position, was looked upon, at that epoch, as a
very important personage, by many of the Princes of the Church, who wrote
to him at Paris under a false name, making use of a cipher and other
customary precautions. After some moments passed in contemplation, before
the portrait of Sixtus V., Rodin returned slowly to the table, on which
lay the letter, which, by a sort of superstitious delay, he had deferred
opening, notwithstanding his extreme curiosity. As it still wanted some
minutes of half-past nine, Rodin, in order not to lose time, set about
making preparations for his frugal breakfast. He placed on the table, by
the side of an inkstand, furnished with pens, the slice of bread and the
radish; then seating himself on his stool, with the stove, as it were,
between his legs, he drew a horn-handled knife from his pocket, and
cutting alternately a morsel of bread and a morsel of radish, with a
sharp, well-worn blade, he began his temperate repast with a vigorous
appetite, keeping his eye fixed on the hand of his watch. When it reached
the momentous hour, he unsealed the envelope with a trembling hand.
It contained two letters. The first appeared to give him little
satisfaction; for, after some minutes, he shrugged his shoulders, struck
the table impatiently with the handle of his knife, disdainfully pushed
aside the letter with the back of his dirty hand, and perused the second
epistle, holding his bread in one hand, and with the other mechanically
dipping a slice of radish into the gray salt spilt on a corner of the
table. Suddenly, Rodin's hand remained motionless. As he progressed in
his reading, he appeared more and more interested, surprised, and struck.
Rising abruptly, he ran to the window, as if to assure himself, by a
second examination of the cipher, that he was not deceived. The news
announced to him in the letter seemed to be unexpected. No doubt, Rodin
found that he had deciphered correctly, for, letting fall his arms, not
in dejection, but with the stupor of a satisfaction as unforeseen as
extraordinary, he remained for some time with his head down, and his eyes
fixed--the only mark of joy that he gave being manifested by a loud,
frequent, and prolonged respiration. Men who are as audacious in their
ambition, as they are patient and obstinate in their mining and
countermining, are surprised at their own success, when this latter
precedes and surpasses their wise and prudent expectations. Rodin was now
in this case. Thanks to prodigies of craft, address, and dissimulation,
thanks to mighty promises of corruption, thanks to the singular mixture
of admiration, fear, and confidence, with which his genius inspired many
influential persons, Rodin now learned from members of the pontifical
government, that, in case of a possible and probable occurrence, he
might, within a given time, aspire, with a good chance of success, to a
position which has too often excited the fear, the hate, or the envy of
many sovereigns, and which has in turn, been occupied by great, good men,
by abominable scoundrels, and by persons risen from the lowest grades of
society. But for Rodin to attain this end with certainty, it was
absolutely necessary for him to succeed in that project, which he had
undertaken to accomplish without violence, and only by the play and the
rebound of passions skillfully managed. The project was: To secure for
the Society of Jesus the fortune of the Rennepont family.
This possession would thus have a double and immense result; for Rodin,
acting in accordance with his personal views, intended to make of his
Order (whose chief was at his discretion) a stepping-stone and a means of
intimidation. When his first impression of surprise had passed away--an
impression that was only a sort of modesty of ambition and self
diffidence, not uncommon with men of really superior powers--Rodin looked
more coldly and logically on the matter, and almost reproached himself
for his surprise. But soon after, by a singular contradiction, yielding
to one of those puerile and absurd ideas, by which men are often carried
away when they think themselves alone and unobserved, Rodin rose
abruptly, took the letter which had caused him such glad surprise, and
went to display it, as it were, before the eyes of the young swineherd in
the picture: then, shaking his head proudly and triumphantly, casting his
reptile-glance on the portrait, he muttered between his teeth, as he
placed his dirty finger on the pontifical emblem: "Eh, brother? and I
also--perhaps!"
After this ridiculous interpolation, Rodin returned to his seat, and, as
if the happy news he had just received had increased his appetite, he
placed the letter before him, to read it once more, whilst he exercised
his teeth, with a sort of joyous fury, on his hard bread and radish,
chanting an old Litany.
There was something strange, great, and, above all, frightful, in the
contrast afforded by this immense ambition, already almost justified by
events, and contained, as it were, in so miserable an abode. Father
d'Aigrigny (who, if not a very superior man, had at least some real
value, was a person of high birth, very haughty, and placed in the best
society) would never have ventured to aspire to what Rodin thus looked to
from the first. The only aim of Father d'Aigrigny, and even this he
thought presumptuous, was to be one day elected General of his
Order--that Order which embraced the world. The difference of the
ambitious aptitudes of these two personages is conceivable. When a man of
eminent abilities, of a healthy and vivacious nature, concentrates all
the strength of his mind and body upon a single point, remaining, like
Rodin, obstinately chaste and frugal, and renouncing every gratification
of the heart and the senses--the man, who revolts against the sacred
designs of his Creator, does so almost always in favor of some monstrous
and devouring passion--some infernal divinity, which, by a sacrilegious
pact, asks of him, in return for the bestowal of formidable power, the
destruction of every noble sentiment, and of all those ineffable
attractions and tender instincts with which the Maker, in His eternal
wisdom and inexhaustible munificence, has so paternally endowed His
creatures.
During the scene that we have just described, Rodin had not perceived
that the curtain of a window on the third story of the building opposite
had been partially drawn aside, and had half-revealed the sprightly face
of Rose-Pompon, and the Silenus-like countenance of Ninny Moulin. It
ensued that Rodin, notwithstanding his barricade of cotton handkerchiefs,
had not been completely sheltered from the indiscreet and curious
examination of the two dancers of the Storm-blown Tulip.
[22] According to the tradition, it was predicted to the mother of Sixtus
V., that he would be pope; and, in his youth, he is said to have kept
swine.