le of Paris,
not only is his subject a subject of loftier and more enduring interest
than his elephants and deer and bears, but his own genius finds a more
congenial medium of expression. In other words, any one who has seen his
"Torch-bearer" or his "Louis d'Orleans" must conclude that M. Fremiet is
losing his time at the Jardin des Plantes. In monumental works of the
sort he displays a commanding dignity that borders closely upon the
grand style itself. The "Jeanne d'Arc" is indeed criticised for lack of
style. The horse is fine, as always with M. Fremiet; the action of both
horse and rider is noble, and the homogeneity of the two, so to speak,
is admirably achieved. But the character of the Maid is not perfectly
satisfactory to _a priori_ critics, to critics who have more or less
hard and fast notions about the immiscibility of the heroic and the
familiar. The "Jeanne d'Arc" is of course a heroic statue, illustrating
one of the most puissant of profane legends; and it is unquestionably
familiar and, if one chooses, defiantly unpretentious. Perhaps the Maid
as M. Fremiet represents her could never have accomplished
legend-producing deeds. Certainly she is the Maid neither of Chapu, nor
of Bastien-Lepage, nor of the current convention. She is, rather,
pretty, sympathetically childlike, _mignonne_; but M. Fremiet's
conception is an original and a gracious one, and even the critic
addicted to formulae has only to forget its title to become thoroughly in
love with it; beside this merit _a priori_ shortcomings count very
little. But the other two works just mentioned are open to no objection
of this kind or of any other, and in the category to which they belong
they are splendid works. Since Donatello and Verrocchio nothing of the
kind has been done which surpasses them; and it is only M. Fremiet's
penchant for animal sculpture, and his fondness for exercising his
lighter fancy in comparatively trivial _objets de vertu_, that obscure
in any degree his fine talent for illustrating the grand style with
natural ease and large simplicity.

VIII

I have already mentioned the most representative among those who have
"arrived" of the school of academic French sculpture as it exists
to-day, though it would be easy to extend the list with Antonin Carles,
whose "Jeunesse" of the World's Fair of 1889 is a very graceful
embodiment of adolescence; Suchetet, whose "Byblis" of the same
exhibition caused his early death to be deplored