Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1894 — “ABT,” YET AWFUL. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

“ABT,” YET AWFUL.

Fremliet’s Famous Statue of the “Maiden and Gorilla” in Wax. New York World. ■Fremiet’s sculpture of a gorilla earrying off a maiden is world-fa-mous. Even the marble is sufficiently horrible. The ferocity of the huge beast and the deadly terror of his victim contribute to make it re pulsive. Yet the lover of art can not but admire the sculpture, while he feels a thrill of disgust. There was published not long ago, in a German art journal, a story about this bit of sculpture. The story was true and the names of the people were given. The story ran thus: “A friend of Fremiet’s was engaged to marry a beautiful girl who lived in Munich, but the girl was poor and her parents sought a richer husband for her. While her lover was absent his sweetheart was, perforce, married to a very vulgar and ugly but immensely wealthy banker. When the discarded suitor learned that, wild with anger and jealousy, he modeled in wax a group that showed to the life the abduction of a beautiful girl by a gorilla.” It was more lifelike than Fremiet’s marble, for the girl’s features were the features of the banker’s bride. That group was placed on in this city, Saturday, at the Eden Musee. It is almost inexpressibly horrible. It stands in a dimlylighted chamber in the middle of a grove of trees. The full moon is coming up above the

horizon. Clasped in the gorilla’s right arm and pressed tight to his shaggy bosom is the form«of a girl. Her eyes are closed, for she has swooned, but even in her fearful dread she seeks with all her feeble power to free herself from the embrace of the monster. Her shapely figure, scantily draped, seems to be not a feather’s weight in the gorilla’s powerful grasp. One hand she presses against the gorilla’s hairy chest, in the vain attempt to free herself.- Either the monster’s tusks or his nails have torn long gashes in her soft white flesh. Her long hair floats in the wind; she is limp, almost inanimate. Her bosom heaves gently as the last sighs of her life escape her. The beast himself is a nightmare. If drunkards saw -him in their dreams, no need for lectures on temperance. His long, muscular left arm hangs to his knees. In that hand he bolds a rock that he has grabbed up to hurl at his pursuers. For he is pursued. The feathers of an arrow that has struck him in his ruthless flight, and part of the arrow shaft project from his paunch. -Hehas death wound. Moved by hidden mechanicism, he turns, now to scowl upon those he has left behind, now to gloat over the hapless maiden in his grasp. His eyes roll as much in anticipation as in anger and in the agonies of the fate that he feels will take him away all too soon. He grinds his teeth, gnashing his jaws in a very ecstacy of rage. .He is a very Satan of beasts, a mammon of gorillas. There was a crowd about this group all last evening. Some women look at it —most of them looked only for a moment. “Dreadful! horrible!” they exclaim, and hurried away.

THE MAIDEN AND THE GORILLA.