in being faithful to this principle can one understand and know how to work. I am an artisan.

Will my experience be of benefit to others? I hope so. At all events, we have a bit to relearn. It will take years of patience and application to rise from the abyss of ignorance into which we have fallen. However, I believe in a renaissance. A number of our artists have already seen the light-the light of intellectual truth. Acts of barbarism against masterpieces cannot be committed any more without arousing the indignation of cultivated people. That in itself is an That in itself is an inestimable gain, for those works of art are the relics of our traditions, and if we have the strength to become an artistic people again, to reincarnate an era of beauty, then those are the works of art which will serve as our models, expressions of a national conscience that will be the mile-stones on our path.

JUDGED by his work, Auguste Rodin is the most modern of artists; judged by his

life and character, he is unquestionably a man of bygone days. As a sculptor, he is such as were Phidias, Praxiteles, and the master architects of the Middle Ages; that is to say, he is of all times. One single idea guides his thoughts, one single aim arouses his energies-art, art through the study of nature.

It is by the concentration of his unusual mind on a single purpose that he attains his remarkable understanding of man, physical and moral, his contemporary, and of the spirit of our age. In the lifelike features of his statues he inscribes the history of the day. They seem to live, and the potency of their life enters into us and dominates us. For the moment we are only a silent spring, merely reflecting their authority.

Through this secret of genius, his statues and groups have an individual charm. They have taken their place in the history of sculpture. There is the charm of the antique, the charm of the Gothic, and the charm of Michelangelo. There is also the charm of Rodin.

HEN I had been attentive and obliging, my grandmother would tell me stories of our pristine ancestors. She had many cuentos by heart, which she told in flowery and rhythmic prose that she never varied by a word; and those epic narrations, often repeated, engraved a network of permanent channels in the memory-stuff of one small child. Indeed, the tales of mamagrande were so precious to me that I would pray for afternoons of shade, which were the propitious ones, and I almost hated the sun, because when it baked our patio my grandmother would not occupy her favorite hammock, nor I my perch near by, on the margin of the blue-tiled fountain. And I invented a plan by which I could earn a reward.

Her cigarettes, which were very special, came from the coast once a month, packed in a cane box. Tapering at one end and large at the other, in wrappings of cornhusk, they were fastened together in coneshaped bundles of twenty-five, and tied at apex and base with corn-husk ribbon. Now, I knew that mamagrande disliked to untie knots (she had often called me to unknot the waxed thread of her embroidering), so I would privately overhaul her stock of cigarettes, making five very tight knots at each end of each cone; and then at the golden hour I would watch from behind the flower-pots on the upper gallery for her tall figure in spreading black silk, with her fan in her hand and her little gold cigarette-pincers hanging at her waist. When she appeared, I would wait breathlessly for the business of her getting settled in her hammock, and suddenly calling me in a sweet, troubled voice to release a cone of cigarettes; whereupon I would run down to her and untie those bad little knots with such honeyed affability that she would proceed to

recompense me from her store of Aztec mythology.

It was not mythology to me; no, indeed. I knew that mamagrande was marvelously old,—almost as old as the world, perhaps, and although she denied, doubtless from excessive modesty, having enjoyed the personal acquaintance of any gods or heroes, I had a dim feeling that her intimate knowledge of the facts connected with such unusual events as, for instance, the birth of Huitzilopochtli, was in its origin more or less neighborly and reminiscent.

Huitzilopochtli was the god of war. More honored anciently in sacrificial blood than any other deity ever set up by man, I loved him once for his mother's sake, for his gallant and wonder-stirring birth, and for the eagle light in the black eyes of my grandmother as she pronounced his name.

It is not so difficult to pronounce as might be thought. "Weet-zee-lo-potchtlee," spoken quickly and clearly with the accent on the "potch," will come somewhere near it, though it lack the relishing curl of my grandmother's square-cut lips. And the god's sweet mother Coatlicue may safely be called "Kwaht-lee-quay," with the accent on the "lee." But I had better begin at the beginning, as my grandmother always did, after lighting her first cigarette, and while adjusting the gold pincers in a hand like a dried leaf.

"The forests have their mysteries, which are sung in their own language by the waters, the breezes, the birds."

Thus mamagrande would begin in a hushed voice, with a wave of the hand that would make the blue smoke of her cigarette flicker in the air like a line of handwriting.

"Nature weeps and laughs, sings and

cries, and man listens to that weeping and that laughter without knowing the cause. When the branch of the tree inclines itself under the weight of the wind, it speaks, it sings, or it cries. When the water of the forest runs murmuring, it tells a story; and its voice may be accordingly either a whisper or a harsh accent.

"Listen to the legend of the forest; listen to it as sung by the birds, the breezes, the waters! The hunters have arrived. The forest is full of the thunder of their cries, and the mountain repeats from echo to echo those shouts which threaten peace and happiness. Our ancestors, the Aztecs, loved the hunt because it was the counterpart of war.

"Camatzin has given the signal to begin. His dart traverses the air and, trembling, buries itself in the heart of the stag, which falls without life. Only the great hunter Camatzin can wound in this manner; only from his bow of ebony can spring the arrows that carry certain death. At the running of the first blood the fury of the hunters is kindled. All at one time draw their bows, and a thousand arrows traverse the air, covering as a cloud of passage the brilliant face of the sun. The slaughter has begun, the fight between the irrational and man, between force and cunning."

Alas! the sonorous imagery of those well-remembered phrases loses much in my attempt to render them in sober English. Hasten we, then, to the encounter between Camatzin and the lioness, which, with its cub, the hunter has pursued to its lair.

"She raises the depressed head, she opens the mandibles, armed with white and sharp teeth. Her red tongue cleans hastily the black snout. She contracts her members of iron, and prepares to launch herself upon him who approaches. Camatzin is valiant. He trembles not before death, but he understands the danger of the fight with the ruler of the forest. Woe to him if he misses his aim!

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"The gaze of the lioness finds that of Camatzin. Two clouds meet; they clash, and give forth a ray which strikes death. The dart sings from the bow, and nails itself in the body of the cub. Roars this for the last time—”

"Ruge éste por la vez postrera," as it rolled out in my grandmother's voice, the

éste signifying that ill-fated cub, for which I always wept. I render the construction literally because it seems to carry more of the perfume that came with those phrases as I heard them by the blue-tiled fountain.

"Roars this for the last time, and the mother roars with sorrow and anger. She sniffs at the blood that issues from the body of her young. She crouches, and so launches herself outside of the cave.

"Shines the solar ray in her red pupils! Moves suavemente her tail, which strikes her sides! Walks her gaze all around her!"

How expressive, in the mouth of mamagrande, was that desperate reconnoiter, and how plainly I could see the beast's yellow gaze "walking" from object to object!

"She straightens her members, as if to assure herself that they will not relax. She crouches with all her weight on her rear feet, and throws herself at Camatzin. He, without retreating, aims his bow, and the wild beast falls with its loins to earth, wounded in the right eye.

"Roars she, and the forest trembles to her roaring. She recovers, she rises, and so rapid is her movement that Camatzin cannot aim in time. The arrow falls without point at the foot of the rock. The bow is useless, brave Camatzin; take the macana! He lifts his great saber of wood edged with sharp flint, and the lion receives a well-aimed blow in the center of the forehead. Now the attack is body against body! Falls the macana, but already the beast has driven its potent claw in the muscular arm of Camatzin. He wishes to show his force, which has made him respected by all; but the beast continually tears his flesh, and he grows weaker."

But in mercy to the reader I'll leave the end of that ferocious conflict to the imagination, and turn to the fortunes of the beloved and blessed Coatlicue.

"Now, Camatzin had a wife," my grandmother would continue softly, after I had supplied her with a fresh cigarette, "of noble lineage, like himself. She was called the loving wife, the saintly woman, by the hearth and in the temple; and her name was Coatlicue.

"Coatlicue sees the night arrive and turn darker and darker. The owl sings;

the husband delays longer than usual. The wind moans in the forest, and the branches bend as in prayer. When the hunters return at last, their arrival startles Coatlicue, as they had not announced their coming with the usual cries of victory. On their shoulders they bring the spoils of the day-the torn body of Camatzin! Coatlicue embraces the corpse of Camatzin, and her children gaze with tear-blurred eyes at the relic that death has sent them."

After a moving description of that first night of bereavement-a description in which the mystic voices of nature sounded their significant notes, my grandmother would proceed to recite in measured rhetoric the spiritual stages by which Coatlicue found consolation in religion. For the Aztecs, apart from and above their hero demigods, to one of whom this saintly widow was destined to give birth, worshiped an invisible Ruler of the Universe. "Daily, when the afternoon falls, Coatlicue burns incense in the temple to the god of her ancestors, at the feet of whose image her beloved Camatzin had deposited a thousand times the laurels of his victories in the hunt and in war. Religion is the consolation unique in these afflictions. When cries the soul, only one balsam exists to cure its wound. Pray, souls that cry, if you wish that your pains be diminished!

"Arrived the autumn, and the afternoons became painted with rich reds, the nights tepid and clear. The first night of full moon bathed in its pale light the temple and Coatlicue, who prayed there. That night she felt a certain pleasure in her weeping. It was no longer that which tears the heart in order to come forth; no, it was the sweet balsam that cures a wound. When her children saw her coming in, they felt themselves happy, because for the first time they saw her smile."

My grandmother would dwell significantly on that smile, which seemed to mark a vague annunciation in the legend of miraculous birth, to be followed in the morning by a miracle of conception narrated with a naïve brevity which always took my breath away.

"Then came the aurora, and it was the first day that the heavens had beautiful color and light since the first day of orphanage. Ran Coatlicue to the temple,

and censed the idol and cleaned the floor carefully, according to her custom. The sun was ascending when a white cloud concealed the radiant face of the king of the heavens.

"Lifts Coatlicue her eyes, and fixes them in space. With all the colors of the rainbow appears one brilliant little cloud that, tearing itself from heaven, reaches the temple: it was a ball of plumes; not more brilliant have the birds of the earth. It rolled over the altar, and fell to the floor. Coatlicue, with respectful gesture, took the plumes and guarded them in the bosom of her white robe. She censed the idol anew, prayed, and started for home. Before descending the last step of the temple she looked in her bosom for the plumes, but they had vanished!"

Such was the conception of the Mexican god of war, and it brought strife into the home of Coatlicue. All ignorant of the miracle that had been wrought, the children of Camatzin presumed to be scandalized at the ineffable happiness that had descended upon their mother, and to conspire against her life. Her own daughter was the malignant ringleader, taunting her two brothers with cowardice, and invoking vengeance in the name of the dead father's honor. And she, with her younger brother, sealed a pact of blood. Their mother felt a change in their regard, and trembled with fear before them, and marveled greatly at the remembrance of the celestial token that had disappeared in her bosom. in her bosom. Meditating on her unworthiness, she deemed it impossible that she should have been chosen by the divinity to engender a god, and she went to the temple to pray for light.

In sharp whispers, with narrowed eyes, my grandmother would go on to describe how the two conspirators followed their mother furtively into the gloom of the temple. Armed with a knife, the son fell upon her as she prayed. A terrible cry filled the space.