lled because, while awaiting his turn to go to
the confessional one Good Friday, he carved a figure of the Christ from
a stick of wood. The impiety evidenced by that figure was too flagrant
not to draw down chastisement on the artist. He had actually had the
hardihood to place that decidedly cynical image on the top of the
tabernacle!

"Sarrasine came to Paris to seek a refuge against the threats of a
father's malediction. Having one of those strong wills which know no
obstacles, he obeyed the behests of his genius and entered Bouchardon's
studio. He worked all day and went about at night begging for
subsistence. Bouchardon, marveling at the young artist's intelligence
and rapid progress, soon divined his pupil's destitute condition; he
assisted him, became attached to him, and treated him like his own
child. Then, when Sarrasine's genius stood revealed in one of those
works wherein future talent contends with the effervescence of youth,
the generous Bouchardon tried to restore him to the old attorney's good
graces. The paternal wrath subsided in face of the famous sculptor's
authority. All Besancon congratulated itself on having brought forth a
future great man. In the first outburst of delight due to his flattered
vanity, the miserly attorney supplied his son with the means to appear
to advantage in society. The long and laborious study demanded by the
sculptor's profession subdued for a long time Sarrasine's impetuous
temperament and unruly genius. Bouchardon, foreseeing how violently the
passions would some day rage in that youthful heart, as highly tempered
perhaps as Michelangelo's, smothered its vehemence with constant
toil. He succeeded in restraining within reasonable bounds Sarrasine's
extraordinary impetuosity, by forbidding him to work, by proposing
diversions when he saw that he was on the point of plunging into
dissipation. But with that passionate nature, gentleness was always
the most powerful of all weapons, and the master did not acquire great
influence over his pupil until he had aroused his gratitude by fatherly
kindness.

"At the age of twenty-two Sarrasine was forcibly removed from the
salutary influence which Bouchardon exercised over his morals and his
habits. He paid the penalty of his genius by winning the prize for
sculpture founded by the Marquis de Marigny, Madame de Pompadour's
brother, who did so much for art. Diderot praised Bouchardon's pupil's
statue as a masterpiece. Not without prof