I understood at once. Since then I have discovered many other things, but that rule has remained my absolute basis. Constant Simon was only an obscure workman, but he possessed the principles and a little of the genius of the great ornamentists who worked at the châteaux of the Loire. On the St.-Michel fountain in Paris there are very beautifully carved decorations, rich and at the same time graceful, which were made by the hand of this little modeler, who knew far more than all the professors of esthetics.

Such was the purpose for which the workshops of old served. The apprentice passed successively through all the stages, and became acquainted with all the secrets of his handicraft. He began by sweeping the studio, and that already taught him care and patience, which are the essential virtues of a workman. He posed, he

served as model for his comrades. The master in turn worked before him among his students. He heard his companions discuss their art, he benefited by the discoveries that they communicated to one another. He found himself faced every day by those unforeseen difficulties which go to make an artist till the moment when the artist is sufficiently capable to master his difficulties. Alternately, they were both teacher and companion, and they conveyed to one another the science of the ancients.

What have we to-day in place of those splendid institutions which developed character and intelligence simultaneously? Schools at which the students think only of obtaining a prize, not attained by close study, but in flattering the professors. The professors themselves, without any deep attachment for their academies, come

hurriedly, overburdened by official duties and all sorts of work; weighed down by perfunctory obligations, they correct the students' papers hastily, and hurriedly return to their regular occupation.

As to the students, twenty or thirty work from a single model, which is some distance from them and around which they can hardly turn. They ignore all those inevitable laws which are learned in the course of work, and which escape the attention of an artist working alone. They attend courses, or read books on esthetics written in technical language with obscure, abstract terms, lacking all connection with concrete reality-books in which the same mistakes are repeated because frequently they are copied from one another.

What sort of students can develop under such disastrous conditions? If one among them is seriously desirous of learning, he breaks loose from his destructive surroundings, is obliged to lose several years first in ridding himself of a poor method, and then in searching for a method which formerly one had mastered on leaving the atelier.

That is the method which I preach to-day as emphatically as I can, calling attention to the numerous benefits and advantages of taking up a variety of handicrafts. Aside from sculpture and drawing, I have worked at all sorts of things, ornamentation, ceramics, jewelry. I have learned my lesson from matter itself, and have adapted myself accordingly.

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