disappear in America. Since Cormac's Chapel he has built nothing
but mud cabins. Since the Cross of Cong he has imported Virgins
from Germany. However, if they want sculpture in this last hour I
will do some for them."

And Rodney had designed several altars and had done some religious
sculpture, or, as he put it to himself, he had done some sculpture
on religious themes. There was no such thing as religious
sculpture, and could not be. The moment art, especially sculpture,
passes out of the domain of the folk tale it becomes pagan.

One of Rodney's principal patrons was a certain Father McCabe, who
had begun life by making an ancient abbey ridiculous by adding a
modern steeple. He had ruined two parishes by putting up churches
so large that his parishioners could not afford to keep them in
repair. All this was many years ago, and the current story was
that a great deal of difficulty had been experienced in settling
Father McCabe's debts, and that the Bishop had threatened to
suspend him if he built any more. However this may be, nothing was
heard of Father McCabe for fifteen years. He retired entirely into
private life, but at his Bishop's death he was heard of in the
newspapers as the propounder of a scheme for the revival of Irish
Romanesque. He had been to America, and had collected a large sum
of money, and had got permission from his Bishop to set an example
of what Ireland could do "in the line" of Cormac's Chapel.

Rodney had designed an altar for him, and he had also given Rodney
a commission for a statue of the Virgin. There were no models in
Dublin. There was no nakedness worth a sculptor's while. One of
the two fat unfortunate women that the artists of Dublin had been