Delsarte System of Oratory

by Delaumosne

Translated by Abby L. Alger.

Chapter I.
The Bases of the Science.

Delsarte published no book upon art. The bases of the science which he created are contained in a synthetical table. Other tables develop each branch of it considered separately.

Starting from an undeniable law--that which regulates the constitution of man,--Delsarte applies it to æsthetics; he designates man as "the object of art," and groups in series the organic agents that co-operate in the manifestation of human thought, sentiment and passion; declaring the purpose of these manifestations, now become artistic, to be the amelioration of our being by throwing into relief and light the splendors of moral beauty and the horrors of vice.

Delsarte defines art in several ways. He has been reproached for his over-amplitude of definition, and his development of it in a sense too metaphysical for a science which he himself calls "positive." I give here only such definitions as seem to me most clear and important.

"Art is at once the knowledge, the possession and the free direction of the agents by virtue of which are revealed the life, soul and mind. It is the appropriation of the sign to the thing. It is the relation of the beauties scattered through nature to a superior type. It is not, therefore, the mere imitation of nature."

The word life, in the sense employed above, is the equivalent of sensation, of physical manifestations.

Man being the object of art, it is from the working of the various faculties of the human organism that Delsarte deduces the task of the artist; as from the knowledge of the essential modalities of the ego, he deduces his law of general æsthetics.

Delsarte teaches, therefore, that man is a triplicity of persons; that is, he contains in his indestructible unity, three principles or aspects, which he calls life, soul and mind; in other words, physical, moraland intellectual persons.

In this statement this master agrees with the philosophers who give a triplicity of essential principles as the base of ontology. Pierre Leroux names them as follows: sensation, sentiment, consciousness.

That which is personal to Delsarte is the derivation of the law of æsthetics from this conception of being.

The primal faculties once ascertained, he devotes himself to an analysis of the organism; he describes the harmony of each of these faculties with the apparatus which serves it as agent for manifesting itself, and demonstrates the fitness of each organ for the task assigned it. The master establishes that the inflections of the voice betray more especially the sensitive nature; that gesture is the interpreter of emotion; that articulation--a special element of speech--is in the direct service of intelligence and thought. He gave the name of vocal to the active apparatus of sensation; dynamic to that of sentiment; buccal to that of articulation.

From the union of the faculties and their agents arise three modes of expression: the language of affection, the language of ellipsis (or gesture) and the language of philosophy. They respond to the three states which Delsarte recognizes in man, and which the artist is to translate: the sensitive state, corresponding to the life; the moral state, to the soul; the intellectual state, to the mind.

But this division into three modalities or into three states is far from giving the number of the manifestations of being. Nature is not reduced to this indigence. From the fusion of these three states, in varying and incessant combination, and from the predominance of one of the primitive modalities, whether accidental or permanent, countless individualities are formed, each with its personal constitution, its shades of difference of education, habits, age, character, etc.

It seems at the first glance as if the mind must be confused by these varieties, whose possible number fades into infinity; but the teacher does not open this labyrinth to his disciples without providing them with a clue.

Independently of these modalities, of these states, which form the basis of the system, Delsarte traces triune subdivisions, which serve as a point of convergence; thus the intermediary rays of the compass or mariner's card are multiplied, and receive special names, without ceasing to belong to one of the four cardinal points.

Whatever, for instance, may be the tendency of the individual whom we desire to portray, or to represent by any art whatsoever, we can think of him in his normal state, as well as in a concentric or eccentric state: this is a first distinction.

Each of these states is itself subject to shades of difference, to modifications. The normal state of a diplomat and that of an artist could not be the same. The one, by the very effect of his profession, will incline to concentration; the other will tend to expansion, if not to eccentration. Hence a simple normal state which is the most common; a normal-concentric state, a normal-eccentric state: here we have a second distinction.

Delsarte, in order to avoid confusion between the word state applied to primordial modalities--which he defines as sensitive, moral and intellectual states,--often uses the word element in place of that of state in speaking of concentration, eccentration and normality, which, in this case, he also calls calm; but, in teaching, he was always accustomed to use these more exact terms: normal state, concentric state, eccentric state.

These differences may occur in regard to each of the other terms. Thus we may have the simple concentric state, the concentro-concentric state, etc.

It is upon this mutual interpenetration of the various states in the triple unity, that the master founds the idea which dominates and pervades his whole system; the three isolated and independent terms do not, to his thinking, constitute the integrality of the human ego. To constitute, according to Delsarte's theory, three, the vital number, it must, by its very essence, and by inherent force, raise itself to its multiple nine. This is what the master calls the ninefold accord.

Medicine--a science which also derives its justification from the human organism--from certain points of view affords us analogies to this mixture of primordial components; for example, nervous and sanguine temperaments which are blended in the sanguo-nervous, etc.

If we refer to our own faculties, does it not strike us indeed, that neither life--nor sensation--nor sentiment, nor intellect can manifest itself without the aid of its congeners or co-associates?

Is intelligence evident elsewhere than in a sensitive being (life)? And even when considering the most abstract things, does it not bear witness of its taste, its power of choice (sentiment)? Can sentiment be absolutely disengaged from impression (life)? And if it is not always under the sway of the idea, is it not certain that it gives rise to it, by provoking observation and reflection (intellect)?

Finally, can an adult--save in the case of absolute idiocy--exist by sensitive life alone outside of all sentiment and all thought (soul, intellect)?

It is by the harmony of the modalities among themselves, and the contribution of each to the unity, that every individual type is formed. Delsarte thought that he could fix their numerical scale; but he was not permitted to carry his scientific studies thus far; still, it is not indispensable to art, which demands above all things very marked types, that verification should be carried to its farthest limits. It will not be difficult, guided by the knowledge which Delsarte has left us, to classify artistic personages as physical, intellectual and moral or sentimental types; and, in the same category, to differentiate those belonging to the concentric state from those falling more particularly into the eccentric or normal states: the Don Juans, Othellos, Counts Ory, etc. Delsarte, in practice, excelled in characterizing these shades of difference.

These prolegomena would not perhaps alone suffice to give this teacher a claim to the title of creator of a science. Although they give the theory of the system, they are far from containing all its developments. But Delsarte did not stop here.

In appropriate language--wherein new words are not lacking for the new science--he takes apart each of the agents of the organism, enumerated above; he examines them in their details, and assigns them their part in the sensitive, moral, or intellectual transmission with which they are charged. Thus gesture--the interpreter of sentiment--is produced by means of the head, torso and limbs; and in the functions of the head are comprised the physiognomic movements, also classified and described, with their proper significance, such as anger, hate, contemplation, etc.,--and the same with the other agents.

Each part observed gives rise to a special chart, where we see, for instance, what should be the position of the eye in exaltation, aversion, intense application of the mind, astonishment, etc. The same labor is given to the arms, the hands and the attitudes of the body, with the mark, borrowed from nature, of the slightest movement, partial or total, corresponding to the sensation, the sentiment, the thought that the artist wishes to express.

I hope that these works may yet be recovered entire, for the master was lavish of them, and that they may be given to the public.^[5]

An exact science at first sight appears contradictory to art. Will it not diminish its limits, * * * trammel its transports? Will it not prove hostile to its liberty at every point? * * * Will it not check the flights of its graceful fancy, its adorable caprice?

No, indeed! as I said in regard to the ideal, the theories of Delsarte, far from hampering the free expansion of art, do but enlarge its horizons, and prepare a broader field for its harmonies. They leave freedom to the opinions most difficult of seizure, the most unforeseen creations; because, responding to every faculty of being, this science, while it corrects imagination, respects its legitimate power.

Finally, what is this science which analyzes every spring and every part brought to play in the manifestation of life? A compass to guide us to the desired goal; a measure of proportion to fix each variety in the immensity of types; a touchstone by which to judge of each man's vocation.

But do not let us forget that if this science holds back, restrains and preserves us from parasites, * * * if it prepares proper soil, and assists feebly dowered natures to acquire real value, it cannot supply the place of those marvelous talents, that personality, which showed us, in Delsarte himself, the heights to which a dramatic singer may attain. What surprises and subjugates us in these privileged persons is the secret of nature; it is not to be written down, not to be demonstrated; this unknown quantity, this mystery, reveals itself at its own time by flashes, and with different degrees of intensity during the career of the same artist. Some have thought to explain the prodigy by that superior instinct known as intuition; but the discovery of the word does not open the arcanum.

I have said enough, I hope, in regard to the science created by Delsarte, to put upon the track such minds as are apt for the subject, and endowed with sufficient penetration to assimilate it; but it must not be disguised that even should the whole work be collected together, the science must still await its examination, its verification and its complements; for a science at its birth is like a program given out for the study of present and future generations. Delsarte was still working on his to the last years of his life. Every day he gained fresh insight; he added branches and accessories. Yet the criticisms of details which will come later--even when they are justified,--will not rob the inventor of the glory of his scientific discovery. Let genius invent, scholars pursue its discoveries! * * * If genius works alone, scientists work hand in hand,

Chapter II.
The Method.

I have shown Delsarte as a composer, as pre-eminently an artist, who, as a certain critic says, "was never surpassed;" I have insisted upon the two titles which form his special glory: that of revealer of the laws of æsthetics, and that of creator of a science to support his discoveries; a science whose application relates particularly to the dramatic and lyric arts, although at its base, and especially when considered as law, it embraces all the liberal arts.

It remains for me to speak of his method, properly so called; of his precepts, his maxims, his opinions and his judgments; of that, in a word, which constitutes the personal manner of each master, and his mode of instruction; for if the law is single in its essential and constitutive ideas, it radiates into diversity in its individual manifestations; it has infinite possibilities.

Delsarte considered art as the surest, purest and most constant good in life. He required much time to complete the education of a pupil, because he knew how long it had taken him to master the methods of translating, through that noble interpreter, art, the best and most sublime possibilities of the human soul; and because he knew as well all that is inherent in our nature of vice and imperfection. He held that the truth, be it good or bad, is always instructive.

In regard to truth he says: "A man may possess remarkable qualities, may have grace, expression, charm and elegance, but they are all as nothing if he does not interpret the truth." He desired the artist to study beauty in every form, to seek and discover its secrets. He tells us that he himself studied the poses of the statues of antiquity for fifteen years.

It was in consequence of this period of study, assuredly, that the master condemned the parallel movement of the limbs in gesture, and recommended attitudes which he called inverse; if, for instance, the actor leans on his left leg, the corresponding gesture must necessarily be entrusted to the right arm.

The master taught that the gesture--the true interpreter of the sentiment--should precede the word. He added: "The word is but an echo, the thought made external and visible, the ambassador of intelligence. Every energetic passion, every deep sentiment, is accordingly announced by a sign of the head, the hand or the eye, before the word expresses it." Thus, the actor and the orator, if they do not conform to this precept, have failed to attain to art.

Delsarte proves his assertion by giving examples, somewhat overdrawn, in a sense the inverse of this theory. Nothing was more amusing than to see him execute one of these dilatory gestures; for instance, this phrase, uttered by the lackey of some comedy, delivering a message: "Sir, here is a letter which I was told to deliver to you at once." The hand extending the note unseasonably, produced so ridiculous an effect that the heartiest laughter never failed to follow.

On Ellipsis.

The preceding steps lead us to ellipsis, which plays an important part in the method of Delsarte.

All the thoughts and sentiments contained in literature, in one comprehensive word, are entrusted to the mimic art of the actor, whose essential agent is gesture. The conjunction and interjection are alike elliptical; thus in the phrase: "Ah! * * how unhappy I am! * *" "Ah!" should imply a painful situation before the explanatory phrase begins. In his course of applied æsthetics, Delsarte gives us the striking effects of the elliptic conjunction.

On Shades and Inflections.

The shade, that exquisite portion of art, which is rather felt than expressed, is the characteristic sign of the perfection of talent; it forms a part of the personality of the artist. You may have heard a play twenty times with indifference, or a melody as often, only to be bored by it; some fine day a great actor relieves the drama of its chill, its apparent nullity; the commonplace melody takes to itself wings beneath the magic of a well-trained, expressive and sympathetic voice. Delsarte possessed this artistic talent to a supreme degree, and it was one of the remarkable parts of his instruction; he had established typical phrases, where the mere shade of inflection gave an appropriate meaning to every variety of impression and sentiment which can possibly be expressed by any one set of words. One of these phrases was this: "That is a pretty dog!"

A very talented young girl succeeded in giving to these words a great number of different modulations, expressing endearment, coaxing, admiration, ironical praise, pity and affection. Delsarte, with his far-reaching comprehension, conceived of more than 600 ways of differentiating these examples; but he stopped midway in the execution of them, and certainly no one else will ever pursue this outline to its farthest limits.

The second phrase was: "I did not tell you that I would not!"

This time the words were given as a study for adults; they lent themselves to other sentiments; they revealed, as the case might be, indifference, reproach, encouragement, the hesitation of a troubled soul, etc.

It was by means of these manifold shades that the artist-professor established characteristic differences in parts wherein so many actors had seen but the identical fact of a similar passion or a similar vice. To his mind, all misers were not the same miser, nor all seducers the same seducer. In singing particularly, with what art Delsarte used the inflection!

On Vocal Music.

In regard to lyric art especially, Delsarte had his peculiar and personal theories. Singing was not to him merely a means of displaying the singer's voice or person; it was a superior language, charged with the rendition, in its individual charm, of all the greatest creations of literature and poetry; all the sweet, tender, or cruel sentiments possible to humanity.

This exceptional singer attained his effects partly by means of certain modifications of the rhythm, which caused inattentive critics to say: "Delsarte does not observe the measure." What they themselves failed to note, was that the first beat was always given firmly; and that it was in the divisions of one measure, and by subtle compensations, that he made the difference. Far from having cause for complaint, the composer gained thereby, a more clear expression of his thought, a more persuasive expansion of his sentiment, and the respiration appeared more easy. It was something similar--with a greater value--to that personal punctuation with which skilful readers often divide the text which they translate.

It was particularly in recitative, the style, moreover, least subject to precise laws, that Delsarte used this license; and it was in this style that he especially excelled.

And is it not in what remains unwritten that the singer's true greatness is revealed? What dilettante has not felt the power of a more incisive attack of the note; of that prolongation of the note, held imperceptibly, which, having captured it, holds the attention of the listener?

But, to hear these things, it is not necessary, as the saying is, "to bestride technique." In so far as the training of the voice is concerned, Delsarte gave himself a scientific basis. He was the first to think that it would be well to know the mechanism of the organ, that it might be used to the best advantage, both by avoiding injurious methods of exercising it, and by aiding the development of the tone by appropriate work.

In his rooms were to be seen imitations of the larynx--in pasteboard--of various sizes. His pupils, it seems to me, could profit but little by these far from pleasing sights. At the utmost it increased their confidence in the man who desired an intimate acquaintance with everything relating to the art which he taught. It is to teachers particularly that the introduction of this auxiliary into the study of the vocal mechanism may have been of some value. I have lately learned that several singing teachers use these artificial larynxes. Can priority be claimed for Delsarte? I can only affirm that he refers to them in a treatise signed by himself, and dated in the year 1831.

I shall not enter into the details of this contingent side of the method; the statement of the facts is enough to lead all those who are interested, to devote thought and study to the matter. I prefer to dwell upon the things which Delsarte carried with him into the grave, having written them only on the memories of certain adepts destined to disappear soon after him.

On Respiration.

Delsarte established his theory of diaphragmatic breathing in accordance with his anatomical knowledge. It consists in restoring the breath, without effort, from the commencing lift of the diaphragm to the production of the tone. He opposed it to the costal breathing, which brings the lungs suddenly into action by movements of the chest and shoulders, and causes extreme fatigue. "The chest," he says, "should be a passive agent; the larynx and mouth, aiding the diaphragm, alone have a right to act in breathing; the action of the larynx consists of a depression, that of the mouth should produce the canalization (concavity) of the tongue and the elevation of the veil of the palate."

To this first idea is attached what the master taught in regard to the distinction between vital breath and artificial breath. It is certain that one may sing with the natural respiration; but it is rapidly exhausted if not augmented by additional inhalation; for it results in dryness and breathlessness, which cause suffering alike to singer and listener. The artificial breath, on the contrary, preserves the ease and freshness of the voice.

On the Position of the Tone.

The placing of the tone was one of Delsarte's great anxieties. According to his theory, the attack should be produced by explosion. He rejected that stress which induces the squeezing out of the tone after it is produced. The way to avoid it is to prepare rapidly and in anticipation of the emission of the note.

These ideas demand oral elucidation; but it is enough to declare them, for teachers and singers to recognize their meaning.

On the Preparation of the Initial Consonant.

The preceding lines refer to vocalization; but Delsarte applied the same process to pronunciation. He directed that the initial consonant should be prepared in the same way as the attack on the tone; it was thus produced distinctly and powerfully, that is, in less appreciable extent of time. Such is the concentration of the archer preparing to launch an arrow; of the runner about to leap a ditch. The master, in no case permitted that annoying compass of the voice before a consonant, so frequently employed by ordinary singers. The Italians justly translate this disagreeable performance by the word strascinato (dragged out or prolonged).

Exercises.

Delsarte has been severely blamed for the way in which he trained the voice. I have nothing to say in regard to those who imputed to him physical and barbarous methods of developing it; but it may be true that he endangered it by certain exercises or by failure to cultivate the mechanism. I do not feel myself competent to pronounce upon this technical point, but I can give an exact account of what was done in his school.

Delsarte directed that the tones should be swelled on a single note, E flat (of the medium); he claimed that by strengthening this intermediary note the ascending and descending scales were sympathetically strengthened. He thus avoided, as he said, breaking the high treble notes by exercises which would render the cords too severely tense, convinced morever, that at a given moment a burst of enthusiasm and will-power would take the place of assiduous practice.

He also taught that this special exercise of the medium would prevent the separation of the registers, that phylloxera of the vocal organ, which wrecks so many singers, and causes them so many sorrows. This was the way to gain that mixed voice, the ideal held up to the scholars as being the most impressive and the most exquisite; that which at the same time ravished the ear and charmed the heart.

This master considered the chest-voice as more particularly physical; and the head-voice, it must be confessed, is too much like the voice of a bird, to awaken sentiment and sympathy.

Delsarte himself possessed this mixed voice; in him, it seemed to start from the heart, and brought tears to eyes which had never known them. The power of that tone--allied to the perfection of shading, diction and lyric declamation--caused every listening soul to vibrate with latent emotion which might never have been waked to life save by that appeal.

I return to the practice of swelled tones upon the note E flat. This note certainly acquired broad and powerful tones about which there was nothing forced, and which were most agreeable. This development was communicated to the neighboring notes. But did not these advantages take from the compass of the scale? If so, were they a counterbalance to the injury? I repeat that I dare not affirm anything in this respect.

Delsarte, assuredly, did not give as much space to vocalization as other teachers, especially those of the Italian school.

It is also undeniable, that dramatic singing--the style which he preferred--is dangerous to the vocal organism; particularly when one practices the shriek or scream, which produces a fine effect when skilfully employed, but is most pernicious in excess.

Delsarte was too conscientious an artist not to sacrifice his voice, at certain moments, to his pathetic effects; but he was very careful to warn his scholars against the abuse of this method; he directed them to use it but very rarely, and with the greatest precaution.

I should also say, in his favor, that light voices were very differently trained from heavy ones. Madame Carvalho, who began her studies in his school, did not alter the flexible but feeble organ she brought there. Mlle. Chaudesaigues and Mlle. Jacob, under Delsarte's tuition, attained to marvels of flexibility, without losing any of their natural gifts.

Appoggiatura.

Delsarte brought about a revolution in French music in everything relating to appoggiatura, or rather, he restored its primitive meaning. The way in which he interpreted it has created a school.

He taught that the root of the word--appoggiatura--being appuyer (to sustain), the chief importance should be given in the phrase, to appoggiatura, by extent and expression; the more so that this note is generally placed on a dissonance; and, according to this master's system, it is on the dissonance--and not at random and very frequently, as is the habit of many singers--that the powerful effect of the vibration of sound should be produced.

Contrary to this opinion, the appoggiatura was for a long time used in France as a short and rapid passing note; it thus gave the music a vivacious character, wholly discordant with the style of serious compositions; the music of Gluck was particularly unsuited to it.

Roulade and Martellato.

In every school of singing the roulade is effected by means of the staccato and legato. Delsarte had a marked prejudice in favor of the martellato, which partakes of both. He compared it, in his picturesque way of expressing his ideas, to pearls united by an invisible thread.

Pronunciation.

The master's pronunciation was irreproachable; not the slightest trace of a provincial accent; never the least error of intonation, the smallest mistake in regard to a long or short syllable. What is perhaps rarer than may be thought, he possessed, in its absolute purity, the prosody of his native language, alike in lyric declamation and in the cantabile. His penetrating tones added another charm to the many merits which he had acquired by study.

Pronunciation, therefore, was skilfully and carefully taught in Delsarte's school. The professor's first care was to correct any tendency to lisp, which he did by temporarily substituting the syllables te, de, over and over again, for the faulty R. This substitution brought the organ back to the requisite position for the vibration of the R.

This process is now in common use; but I cannot say whether it was employed before Delsarte's day. He obtained very happy results from it.

E mute before a Consonant.

Delsarte did not allow that absolute suppression of the E mute before a consonant, which seems to prevail at present, and which produces so bad an effect in delivery. As the evil, at the time of which I speak, was yet comparatively unknown, he did not make it a case of conscience; but if he never lent himself to this ellipsis, he, "the lyric Talma," "the exquisite singer," as he has frequently been called, should we not regard his abstinence as a condemnation from which there is no appeal? I do not believe, moreover, that either Nourrit or Dupré authorized by their example a habit so contrary to the rules of French versification, so disagreeable to the well-trained ear and so opposed to good taste. Such young singers as have yielded to it, have only to listen to themselves for one moment to abandon it forever.

It is certain that E mute can in no instance be assimilated to the accented E; but to suppress it entirely, is to break the symmetry of the verse, to put the measure out of time. It is unmistakable that the weakness of the vowel, or mute syllable, concerns the sound, not the duration. Let it die away gently; but for Heaven's sake, do not murder it! Voltaire wrote: "You reproach us with our E mute, as a sad, dull sound that dies on our lips, but in this very E mute lies the great harmony of our prose and verse." Littré recognizes two forms of the E mute: the E mute, faintly articulated as in "àme;" and the E mute sounded as in me, ce, le;but he does not allude to an E which is entirely null.

Once more, then, that there may be no misunderstanding, let me say that the word mute added to the E, has but a relative sense, in view of the two vowels of the same name and marked with an acute or a grave accent.

One fact throws light on the question: did any author ever make a character above the rank of a peasant or a lackey, say:

"J'aime' ben Lisett' J'crois qu'ell' m'en veut!"

Take an example from Voltaire (tragedy of the Death of Caesar): "Voilà vos successeurs, Horace, Décius." Evidently, if the E mute had not been counted, the second hemistich of the Alexandrine verse would have had but five syllables instead of six.

Would any one like to know how the heresiarchs of the E mute would manage?

In this instance they would repeat the A of the penultimate, aspirating it and pronouncing thus: "Voilà vos successeurs, Hora ... as', Décius."

In this way they would have the requisite number of syllables; but they would be wholly at odds with the dictionary of the good actors of the Théâtre Français.

This falsification is especially common in singing, though it is no less revolting in that field of art. How often at concerts--the force of tradition saves us at the theatre--do we hear even artists of great reputation pronounce:

"Quel jour prosp'..er' plus de mystè..er," instead of: "Quel jour prospère plus de mystère." And, in one of the choruses of the opera "La Reine de Chypre":

"Jamais, jamais en Fran ... anç'
Jamais l'Anglais ne régnera!"

Instead of:

"Jamais, jamais en France,
Jamais l'Anglais ne régnera!"

This anomaly is most offensive in the final syllable of a verse, because there the measure is more impaired than ever, and in this way that alternation of male and female rhymes is suppressed, which produces so flowing and graceful a cadence in French verse.

E mute before a Vowel.

The encounter of E mute in a final syllable, with the initial vowel of the word which follows it, makes the defect more apparent and accordingly easier to fight against.

Delsarte's process was as follows: When a silent syllable is immediately followed by a word beginning with another vowel, the E mute (by a prolongation of the sound of the penultimate) is suppressed with the next letter. Thus in the aria of Joseph (opera by Méhu):

"Loin de vous a langui ma jeune.. sexilée;" and in Count Ory: "Salut, ô vénéra ... blermite."

In these cases, by an unfortunate spirit of compensation, the abettors of the innovation, suppressing the grammatical elision, sing thus:

"Loin de vous a langui ma jeune ... ess'exilée."
"Salut, ô vénréra ... abl'erm ... it!"

Littré's Dictionary gives us the same pronunciation as Delsarte; and his written demonstration is even more positive. We find favorables auspices, arbres abattus, written in this way: "fa-vo-ra-ble-z-auspices, arbre-z-abattus."

It is, however, very difficult to express these differences exactly, in type: what Littré expresses radically by typographic characters, is blended with most natural delicacy by the voice of a singer.

Thus, according to Delsarte, the E mute of a final syllable should be suppressed before a vowel, on condition of a prolongation of the sound, in harmony with the penultimate syllable.

According to Delsarte again, according to Voltaire, according to Littré, the E mute is weakened, more or less, but never completely suppressed, before a consonant.

Finally Legouvé, whose voice is preponderant in these matters, whose books are in the hands of the whole world, has never entered into this lettricidal conspiracy.

I hope to be pardoned this long digression, thinking it my duty to protest against such a ludicrous method of treating French prosody; I do so both in the name of æsthetics and as a part of my task as biographer of Delsarte.^[6]

Chapter III.
Was Delsarte a Philosopher?

If we consider philosophy in the light of all the questions upon which it touches, the subjects which it embraces, we must answer "No;" but if we concentrate the word within the limits of æsthetics, we may reply in the affirmative. Did not Delsarte point out the origin of art, its object and its aim?

Not that this master never exceeded the limits of his science and his method. He had sketched out a "Treatise on Reason," and had begun to classify the faculties of being, entering into the subject more profoundly than the categories of Kant; but all this only exists in mere outline, in a technology whose terms have not been weighed and connected together by a solid chain of reasoning: logic has not uttered its final word therein.

A separate volume would be required to give an idea of these gigantic sketches, which must remain in their rudimentary state.

If Delsarte had finished his work, it would seem that he must have leaned toward the scholastic method, now so much out of favor; but certainly he would put his own personality into this, as into everything that he undertook to investigate; for he was held back on the steeps of mysticism by the science which he had created, and which could only afford a shelter to the supernatural as an extension of those psychical faculties which have been called intuition, imagination, etc.

Then the influence of Raymond Brucker, who died shortly after Delsarte, being lessened, and conscientious and patient study having fed the flame in that vast brain, we might have obtained affirmations of a new order. And Delsarte might have met with thinkers like Leibnitz, Descartes and Jean Reynaud, on that height where religion is purged of superstition and fanaticism, philosophy set free from atheism and materialism!

If Delsarte had a fault, it was that he regarded all modern philosophy as sensuous naturalism; and if reason sometimes seemed to him suspicious, it was because he often confounded it with sophistry, which reasons indeed, but is far from being reason.

Let us regret that Delsarte never finished his complete philosophy; but let us be grateful to him for having raised his art and all arts to the level of philosophy, by giving them truth as a basis and morality as a final aim; which fairly justifies, it seems to me, the title of artist-philosopher, which I have sometimes applied to him.

I should not neglect, in this connection, to set down the explanation, given by Delsarte, of what he meant by the word trinity, as used in his scientific system. The reader cannot fail to see the elements of a system of philosophy in this succinct statement, this outline to be filled up:

"The principle of the system lies in the statement that there is in the world a universal formula which may be applied to all sciences, to all things possible: --this formula is the trinity.

"What is requisite for the formation of a trinity?

"Three expressions are requisite, each presupposing and implying the other two. Each of three terms must imply the other two. There must also be an absolute co-necessity between them; thus, the three principles of our being--life, mind and soul--form a trinity.

"Why?

"Because life and mind are one and the same soul; soul and mind are one and the same life; life and soul are one and the same mind."

Chapter IV.
Course of Applied Æsthetics.

Meeting of the Circle of Learned Societies.

Independently of its method, which was especially applicable to dramatic and lyric arts, Delsarte's doctrine, as we have seen, drew from the primordial sources, which are the law of things, the principles of all poetry, all art and all science. The intense light which he brought thence was too dazzling for young scholars, whose minds were rarely prepared by previous education. It, nevertheless, overflowed into the daily lessons, and gave them that peculiar and somewhat singular aspect, which acted even upon those whose intelligence could not cope with it. Such is the mysterious magic of things which penetrate before they convince.

But these lofty problems demanded an audience in harmony with their elevation. Delsarte soon attracted such. Under the title "Course of Applied Æsthetics," he collected in various places, notably at the "Circle of Learned Societies," profane and sacred orators, and learned men of all sorts. There he could develop points of view as new as they seemed to be strikingly true. It was on leaving one of these meetings, that a distinguished painter thus expressed his enthusiasm: "I have learned so much to-day, and it is all so simple and so true, that I am amazed that I never thought of it before."

The Course of Applied Æsthetics was addressed to painters, sculptors, orators, as well as to musicians, both performers and composers; and was finally extended to literary men. This audience of scholars was no less astonished and enchanted than others had been.

Theory of the Degrees.

The theory of degrees was largely developed at these meetings, and I have purposely delayed it till this chapter. To understand this theory--one of the most striking points in Delsarte's method, and original with him,--one should have some idea of the grammar which he composed for the use of his pupils.

I will not say that this treatise was complete in the sense usually attached to the word grammar. There is no mention of orthography or of lexicology; but all that is the very essence of language, that from which no language, no idiom can escape--the constituent parts of speech--are examined and investigated from a philosophic and psychologic point of view. Just as the author examined the constituent modalities of our being in the light of æsthetics, he seized the affinities between the laws of speech, as far as regards the voice--logos--and the moral manifestations of art.

This production of Delsarte has undergone the fate of almost all his works--it has not been printed. Indeed, I greatly fear that, all his notes on the subject can never be collected; nevertheless that which has been gathered together presents a certain development. I will not enter into the purely metaphysical part, limiting myself, as I have done from the beginning of this study, to making known the conceptions of Delsarte only in so far as they refer to the special field of æsthetics.

In this category, we find the following definitions which serve to classify the quantitative values or degrees: that is the extent assigned to each articulation or vocal emission to enable it to express the thoughts, sentiments and sensations of our being in their truth and proportionate intensity:

1. Substantive is the name given to a group of appearances, to a totality of attributes.

2. Adjective expresses ideas, simple, abstract, general and medicative; it is an abstraction in the substantive.

3. Verb is the word that affirms the existence and the co-existence between the being existing and its manner of existing: that is to say it connects the subject with the attribute. The verb is not a sign of action, but of affirmation, and existence.

4. The participle alone is a sign of action.

5, 6, 7. The article, pronoun and preposition fit into the common definitions.

8. The adverb is the adjective of the adjective and of the participle (in so far as it is an attribute of the verb); it modifies them both, and is not modifiable by either of them; it is a sign of proportion, an intellectual compass.

9. The conjunction has the same function as the preposition: it unites one object to another object; but it differs from it, inasmuch as the preposition has but a single word for its antecedent, and a single word for its objective case, while the conjunction has an entire phrase for antecedent, and the same for complement. It characterizes the point of view under the sway of which the relations should be regarded: restrictive, as but; hypothetical or conditional, as if? conclusive, as then, etc., etc. The conjunction presents a general view to our thought, it is the reunion of scattered facts; it is essentially elliptical.

10. The interjection responds to those circumstances where the soul, moved and shaken by a crowd of emotions at once, feels that by uttering a phrase it would be far from expressing what it experiences. It then exhales a sound, and confides to gesture the transmission of its emotion.

The interjection is essentially elliptical, because, expressing nothing in itself, it expresses at the time all that the gesture desires it to express, for ellipsis is a hidden sense, the revelation of which belongs exclusively to gesture.

It must first be noted that these degrees are numbered from one to nine, and that, of all the grammatical values defined, the conjunction, interjection and adverb are classed highest.

Delsarte made the following experiment one day in the "Circle of Learned Societies," during a lecture:

"Which word," he asked his audience, "requires most emphasis in the lines--

"The wave draws near, it breaks, and vomits up before our eyes,
Amid the surging foam, a monster huge of size?"

The absence of any rule applicable to the subject caused the most complete anarchy among the listeners. One thought that the word to be emphasized must be monster--as indicating an object of terror; another gave the preference to the adjective huge. Still another thought that vomits demanded the most expressive accent, from the ugliness of that which it expresses.

Delsarte repeated the lines:

"The wave draws near, it breaks, and ... vomits up before our eyes."

It was on the word and that he concentrated all the force of his accent; but giving it, by gesture, voice and facial expression, all the significance lacking to that particle, colorless in itself, as he pronounced the word, the fixity of his gaze, his trembling hands, his body shrinking back into itself, while his feet seemed riveted to the earth, all presaged something terrible and frightful. He saw what he was about to relate, he made you see it; the conjunction, aided by the actor's pantomime, opened infinite perspectives to the imagination; his words had only to specify the fact, and to justify the emotion which had accumulated in the interval.

But this particle, which here allows of eight degrees, is much diminished when it fills the office of a simple copulative. The extent of the word or the syllable is always subordinate to the sense of the phrase; in the latter case it does not require more than the figure 2.

Chapter V.
The Recitation of Fables.

Some years before his death Delsarte substituted for his concerts, lectures in which he explained his scientific doctrines and his philosophy of art. He also supplied the place of song by the recitation of certain fables selected from La Fontaine. He was not less perfect in this style than in the interpretation of the great rôles of tragedy and grand lyric poems; but it must be acknowledged, that under this new guise, his talent could not display itself in all its amplitude; save for the facial expression which gave the lessons of the apologue a variety of outline of which La Fontaine himself perhaps never dreamed ... and in spite of the fine and scholarly accent which he could give to all those clever beasts, he was, on many points, deprived of his power and his prestige: how endow a lion with the proud poses of Achilles; and lend the foolish grasshopper the satanic charm of Armida?

Instead of noble or terrific attitudes, his gesture was confined to a few movements of forearm or hand; of his fingers, when the intentions were more subtle, more refined ... Still it was always most pleasant to hear him. It was Delsarte restrained, but not diminished. If you did not recover in his speaking voice that sort of enchantment with which his slightly-veiled tone pierced the soul, his accent remained so pure, so intelligent, that you were none the less ravished.

When, in the fable of The Two Pigeons, he said:

"Absence is the greatest of ills, ...
Not so for you, cruel one!"

He discovered shades, hitherto unknown, with which to paint reproach mingled with grief. And when he said:

"The ant ... is not a lender!..."

A more affirmative and striking sense of the character attributed to our thrifty friend, was detached from this delay, filled up by a negative movement of the narrator's head.

If Delsarte had limited himself in his lectures, to teaching men by means of the menagerie, which was a sly burlesque of the courtiers of Louis XIV., perhaps he might have made idolatrous partisans there as elsewhere; but it seems as if in the exposition of his theory, he posed rather as a censor than a teacher; he delighted in baffling the mind by paradoxes. By annexes superimposed and ill-blended with his system, he sometimes compromised those scientific truths whose splendor bursts forth when they are freed from heterogeneous accessories. We cannot otherwise explain the resistance of certain minds, distinguished otherwise, to the recognition in him of the artist who excited the enthusiasm of all the most competent critics and brilliant amateurs.

Chapter VI.
The Law of Æsthetics.

However striking and superior the system of François Delsarte has been shown to be, however admirable and attractive the manifestation of art in his person,--herein lie not his first rights to the grateful sympathy which we owe to his memory. His works and discoveries in æsthetics are a benefit of general interest, while they disclose to us the fruitful resources of his genius.

In the first place, what is a law? We have here to deal, not with the legislation decreed by man for the regulation of social and political relations, but with those laws deduced from a natural order, as the principle of life itself, which govern the relations of beings and of things. In religion these laws are its dogmas and mysteries; philosophically speaking, the laws of things are the essentials of their nature, their specific relations.

Voltaire has written: "Law is the instinct by which we feel justice." In Littré's Dictionary we find stated that "laws are conditions imposed by circumstances." Another has said: "The constant, uneludable succession in which phenomena occur, takes the name of law."

I would here state, that in no one of the last three citations does the word "law" seem to me to be precisely defined. From the different explanations of the natural laws which I have been able to compare, I conclude that laws are forces containing in themselves the reasons, to us unknown, of a power and permanence which are unchangeable. Plato named them ideas. We must now conclude that the nature of a law, in the present acceptation of the term, can be but imperfectly interpreted by exact formulæ. Laws are still much involved in the secrets of creation. Here must we seek their origin or origins.

But courage still! Although these formulæ but imperfectly define law, the facts suffice to establish them. They (facts) show the certain action and, as stated heretofore, the uneludable nature of these formulæ.

But the discovery of Delsarte is the application to æsthetics of a natural law, proven and established by science. This law is that which governs the system of man's organism. Its present application is justified by a series of scientifically coördinated facts. Delsarte rests upon the principle that man is the object of art. Thus the artist should aim to manifest human nature in its three modalities, in its three phases which the master named life, soul and mind. In other words, the beings physical, moral and mental.

These three expressions figure in the work of Pierre Leroux (De l'Humanité) in the following equivalent terms: sensation, sentiment, knowledge. But Leroux applied to ethics this law of human organism, whereas Delsarte derived from it the law of æsthetics. When two minds of this stamp are thus led, each in his own way, to the same source of analogous principles differently applied, is it not a proof that they have stated truth? And in this case it is more than presumable that the two men of whom I speak had never worked together. Delsarte was a philosopher in spite of himself. With Pierre Leroux art was only an element contingent upon a system which he elaborated.

Was Delsarte led to his classification of man's nature by the doctrine of the three persons in the Trinity combined in unity? Was he, by his observations upon the human triplicity, led on to consider their infinite development in the divine personalities? I know not, nor is it of importance in considering the system.

Leroux affirmed a relation between the unity of man and the universality of his pantheism; both relying at the outset upon an idea at once religious and philosophical. But the research of Leroux was philosophically inclined, while that of Delsarte was of a character more especially religious.

Is it necessary to urge that you accept this obviously primitive classification of the human faculties? Who, that shall have considered a moment to convince himself, can doubt this truth,--that our sensations, our sentiments, our understanding, are the principal elements of our life, and that all that we are able to know of ourselves is made known to us by them directly, or by the result of their combinations? This consideration will soon lead us to the rational development of the theory of Delsarte. For the present, it suffices to receive these principles as they have been presented to us, and to admit that art could not go far astray while following a clue leading from a law invincible, and guiding to a science as positive as that of the astronomer, derived from the law of attraction, or that of the chemist, depending upon the law of affinities. Here need be no confusion. The science is positive. The mystery of the natural law implies a hypothesis,--even were the proposition negative.

Delsarte insisted upon the influence of a religious sentiment in art, as a part of the constitutive animating faculties of the human being. In the light of this proposition his enemies maintain that he teaches this heresy: that success in æsthetics depends upon a definite faith--even upon the observance of the Catholic religion! This distinction between religion and creed, between sentiment and assertion, I have followed carefully since the beginning of my study. Delsarte was able to so address his pupils at the beginning of a lecture, as to arouse the apathetic, and electrify the passionate; but his teaching was far from dogmatic. I do not say that at times, in his aspirations and dreams, which he regarded perhaps as intuitions, this religious philosophy did not make some incursions into the region of mysticism. I have seen at his home charts named from the circumincession,^[7] and classifying celestial spirits; but these trans-mundane personifications found no place in his practical lectures. They are not found in the great synthetical chart which I possess, and which recapitulates the system as the master arranged it in the strength of his youth and genius, free from all mystical element.

When, in 1859, I submitted to Delsarte my treatise containing a succinct statement of his method, he said to me: "You have not followed me so far as the angels."

I replied: "I have related and recognized as truth all that I have heard you teach upon the laws of art as deduced from the relations of the human faculties, because I have observed and verified it among people and upon myself. But I speak not of things which you have never shown me, and whose existence you have never demonstrated. The angels are of this number."

Yet he received with no less approval my profane work. And it is the judgment which he placed upon that essay which authorizes my resuming the subject, augmented by further developments and evidence.

I should not state with so great confidence this great truth--the application of a natural law to a succession of discoveries constituting a science, an incontestable innovation--were I not able to refer to competent opinions supporting my statement. A few of these opinions I would here quote from some of the journals I have examined, many of which thoroughly appreciated Delsarte throughout the long period of his teaching.

It was said by Adolphe Guéroult (Presse, May 15, 1858): "To discover and produce wonderful effects, is preëminently the characteristic of great artists, but never, so far as I can learn, has it occurred to any one, before Delsarte, to attach these strokes of genius to positive laws." And further: "The eloquent secrets of pantomime, the imperceptible movements which, in great actors, so forcibly impress us, coming under the observation of this discoverer, were by him analyzed and synthetized in accordance with laws whose clearness and simplicity render them doubly admirable."

I give also some statements from the Journal des Débats (May 10, 1859). Though in the following the word "law" does not appear, it bears interestingly upon the relations of the ideas and expressions under consideration. The quotation is:--

"The audience was charmed and instructed. It applauded the new definitions. It divined the essence of each art, and comprehended that the various manifestations of art are classified according to the classifications of the human faculties. It knows why each passion produces each accent: 'because the accent is the modulation of the soul,' and why a given emotion produces a given expression of the face, gesture and attitude of the body."

When we allow that "the classifications of the manifestations of art are made according to those of the human faculties," do we not also allow that they are derived from one law?

Thus the fiat lux ("let there be light") is pronounced. Art departs from chaos, escapes from anarchy; it acts no longer only for the so-called artist, but also for the actor and singer, whom we are now to consider. Art has to do with the pose of the body, a graceful carriage, distinct pronunciation and an unconscious command of dramatic effects. For a tenor to phrase agreeably, vocalize skilfully, giving us resonant chest-tones, no longer suffices to gain for him the title of great singer.

The followers of art should be able, before and above all, to portray humanity in its essential truth, and according to the original tendency of each type. Mannerism and affectation should forever be proscribed--unless they are imitated as an exercise--but all the excellence that chance has produced up to the present time should be incorporated in the new science.

Moreover, by referring to a law the occasional successes which come to one, it becomes possible to reproduce them at will.

The essential point is to get back to the truth, to express the passions and emotions as nature manifests them, and not to repeat mechanically a series of conventional proceedings which are violations of the natural law. "Effects should be the echoes of a situation clearly comprehended and completely felt,"--such was the import of this teaching.

One of the great benefits arising from the discoveries of Delsarte is the reconciliation of freedom and restraint. If it bind the artist by determinate rules, it is in order to free him from routine, to recall him to the general law of being and of his own individuality. It is in order that he may study himself, in the place of submitting to arbitrary prescriptions. In such study every marked personality will find itself in its native element.

As for those who have no vocation, and in whom the "ego" distinguishes itself so little from the multitude that it remains lost in it, it is best that they should withdraw, since they are not called. They have in view only vanity or speculation, and must always be intruders in the sacred temple of art.

"My glass is not large, but I drink from my glass," said Alfred de Musset. Very well! let each one drink from his glass, but observe! it is not necessary that in the true artist all should be individual and peculiar. It is necessary only that there should exist a degree of individuality, something novel, a distinguishing tone and an artistic physiognomy peculiarly his own. Servile imitations, plagiarism, stupid adaptations, put to death all art and all poetry. In literature particularly is such decline most easy.

Hoping that, from what has been said, you have been led more fully to appreciate the advantage of seeing all of the branches of intellectual culture led out of the ruts of routine, away from plagiarism and from disorder and anarchy, one word upon the most distasteful and effectual blight to which art is subject--the loss of naturalness, viz., affectation. Can anything be more irritating than an affected actor or singer, caterers to perverted tastes?

In sculpture what is more displeasing than a distorted figure, which aimed at grace and is become a caricature? Affectation is in the arts the equivalant of sophistry in logic, of the false in morals, of hypocrisy in religion. It is not extravagant to assume that affectation, being a falsity, an active lie, is a torture to the spirit which perceives it, and a wrong to the honest souls who endure it. It should be, therefore, for twofold cause, banished without pity from the realm of æsthetics. Why should the natural, which is the expression of truth, have so great an attraction if affectation--its enemy and incumbrance--aroused not our impatience or disdain?

How is it that in children of all classes we find grace, ravishing and inimitable? It is because in them the accord is perfect between the look, the smile, the gesture and the impression within, of which they are the interpreters--the adequate signs, as Delsarte would say--the perfidious flexibility of words never interposing to alter the harmony.

True grace in adults is not that which is studied, nor that which is artistically copied from a badly-chosen type. Grace is born of itself, the natural fruit of the culture of the mind, of elevated thoughts and noble sentiments. It is a combination of excellences which come unconsciously to some privileged beings. To imitate beautiful effects in nature, to surprise their expressions, after having observed and established the relation of cause to effect,--this is the end to which the discovery of Delsarte would lead us.

As it is difficult for each to find ready at his command the elements for such research, how can we overestimate the great value of establishing schools in which the instruction of students of the great art shall be guided in accordance with the established laws of æsthetics? The time of greatest necessity is the immediate present, since the voice of the people cries loudly through the press, "Art is decaying and will surely die!"

"Barriers are also supports," said Madame de Staël; and what more sure support in the decadence which threatens us, than a positive science deduced from irrefragable law! I say irrefragable with conviction. Though human laws be subject to change, the laws of nature are shown to be immutable, at least so far as the observations of learned men of all ages have been able to establish them.

To such assertions one objection arises: Why, admitting that the human organism furnishes exact and complete means of manifesting art in all the departments of æsthetics, should not others before Delsarte have discovered that correlation? I have conscientiously considered and sought light in this direction, and the result of my research furnishes me only a negation. Although I do not here attempt a complete study of the philosophy of art, nor a general history of the arts, I have sought to discover all that could warrant one in presuming the discovery of a law of æsthetics in antiquity, particularly among the Greeks.

I find that in the writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle--who are the best authorities--art was a dependence upon philosophy; that is to say, one with it, having no law outside of it. (Whereas, in the work of Delsarte, æsthetics occupies the first place, and philosophy becomes accessory.)

I will here enter into some details of the ancient teachings.

Socrates gave to his teachings a practical character founded upon the knowledge of man. He took for his point of departure man himself, and established (according to this idea) a morality with the motto of the temple of Delphi,--"Know thyself." This doctrine related more especially to ethics than to æsthetics--as later did that of Pierre Leroux--and it was far from being able to direct artists in their work.

Plato often discoursed upon the True, the Beautiful, the Good. He strove to disengage them from the concrete that he might derive some general formulæ. To do this he employed the method of "elimination," a form of dialectics which I recommend to no one, notwithstanding its great value and the services it may render, after all, to those minds endowed with patience. What does he conclude in regard to art?

The Socratic and dogmatic dialogues--the Phaedo, the Gorgias, the Symposium, Protagoras, Ion, Phaedrus--abound in allegories, aphorisms, and in aspirations toward an ideal, more or less clearly defined, which end, however, not by any means in a discussion of art, but in such affirmations as that which closes the first Hippias:--"Beautiful things are difficult."

In the Symposium we have a philosophical discussion interposed between two orgies. Socrates there maintains his title of sage, but it is surely not wisdom which presides at the feast. What light upon my subject? Do we here find any conclusive decision regarding art? No! We have instead such statements as this: "It is possible for the same man to be both a tragic and a comic poet." Then are made some reflections upon time in music. We can as yet discover nothing like a law of æsthetics.

In this company, where are assembled the most cultivated of the Athenian citizens, they discuss love and jealousy of a kind that the moral instinct of modern society can with difficulty comprehend. But these dissertations are of no aid in the solution which I seek.

And yet the spirit of Socrates at times attained to great heights. He puts into the mouth of a woman of Mantinea the theory which saps the old doctrine and presents monotheism. It is but one step thence to Christianity, and it was Apollonius of Tyana, disciple of Pythagoras, who established a connection between the idealism of the later Greek philosophy and the spirituality of the new religion taught by Jesus of Nazareth.

Socrates, after a discussion upon those intermediate deities, whom he called daimons, and among whom he places love, assigns to love an origin and strange attributes which, to a certain extent, explain the remarkable workings of this passion at that time. He at once exalts and seeks to make comprehended the new god--"Beauty eternal, uncreated and imperishable, a beauty having nothing sensuous, nothing corporeal,--which exists absolutely and eternally." This is all.

Perhaps this ideal of love, as that of philosophy, may have been expressed in the foundation of the religious ideal of Delsarte, but this encounter in the ethereal regions of theology and psychology--where the human consciousness perceives nothing tangible, and whence it derives only vague aspirations--implies no knowledge, of anything like a law, a science or a method, such as our artist-innovator of the nineteenth century conceived and taught.

Aristotle, disciple of the founder of the Academy of Athens, divided the sciences into three classes--logic, philosophy and morals. Within this classification art is closely bound, but this philosopher made no scientific demonstration of it. His workings are not those of application and execution. More than his predecessors, it is true, he considered the human organism and, in this, his conception bears a certain analogy to the system of Delsarte. Aristotle, as well as Plato, advised the study of nature, and seeking there the elements of the Beautiful; but they had specially in view literature and eloquence. Further than this, their precepts are counsels and have reference to no definite law. They have not shown the links of connection between the human faculties and the mechanism which manifests them; they have not taught man the manner of using his organs to express artistically his sensations, emotions and thoughts.

The Greeks had every advantage of models and philosophical schools, in which art was taught. But they had no school of æsthetics. Artists of genius taught the schools more than they learned of them; and these artists, so far as I can learn, have left no trace of theoretical works, but, as before written, genius precedes and exemplifies law. While Plato and Aristotle placed a beacon light upon the road leading to a law, they never touched the goal. Delsarte proceeded otherwise. He starts with a principle clearly defined and everything harmonizes with it.

Have the historians and critics of the Greek philosophy discovered that which I vainly sought in its initiators,--a law of æsthetics? This is a question to be answered.

Winkelmann, in his "History of Art," says: "The fine arts, in their rise and decadence, may be likened unto great rivers which, at the point of fullest greatness, break up into innumerable tiny streams and are lost in the sands." Still following this imagery, he compares "Egyptian art to a fine tree whose growth is stopped by a sting; Etruscan art to a torrent; Greek art to a limpid stream."

Now, the law of life of trees, streams or torrents, is not identical with that which governs the unity of a human life.

Like Aristotle, Winkelmann states clearly the principle that man is the measure of all things, but he does not follow up the consequences; he reaches no scientific demonstration upon any point. Far from establishing the existence of a law of æsthetics among the Greeks, he simply remarks upon the extreme simplicity of their beginnings, and shows by what gropings they came from Hermes to the most perfect works of Phidias and Praxiteles.

Mengs states that "the first designs were of forms approaching human semblance;" and that the sciences and philosophy must of necessity have preceded the Beautiful in the arts. He thinks that the Greeks established the proportions of their figures by imitation of beautiful nature.

From these two commentators we have a history of the progression of the arts toward the Ideal. Mengs states that the Greeks and the Etruscans have given rules of proportion and style. But progression, proportion, style,--all of which proceeding from a fixed standard of beauty may guide artists--the perception even of the ideal which each one interprets in his own way--cannot be assimilated to that original law which carries in itself all the reasons of the concept, that which contains all conditions and means of a true execution,--individual even to the perfection of each type, general and varied as the infinite shades of nature.

In response to the allegation of Mengs, that "the sciences and philosophy must necessarily have preceded the Beautiful in the arts," I would call attention to the fact that celebrated artists--as Phidias and Zeuxis for example--had produced their works long before the dialogues between Socrates, Protagoras, Hippias and others, upon the True, the Good and the Beautiful. The great painter and the great sculptor could only have proceeded by the intuition of their genius, knowing nothing of a law of æsthetics.

In that which remains to us of antiquity, I find nothing which implies such an application of the human organism to the arts as that whose discovery, promulgation, exemplification and teaching we owe to Delsarte.

M. Eugène Véron, writer of our day, and author of remarkable works on art, far from recognizing among the Greeks a law of æsthetics, writes of Plato: "He considered ideas as species of divine beings, intermediate between the Supreme Deity and the world. Theirs is the power of creation and formation.... Matter unintelligent and self-formed is nothing, and realizes existence only through the operation of the idea which gives it its form. Aristotle begins by rejecting all this phantasmagory of eternal and creative ideas. He fills the abyss between matter and spirit. God, pure thought and being preëminent, brings all into existence by his power of attraction which gives to all activity and life."

We wander farther and farther from a law of æsthetics and its means of application as established by Delsarte.

Of all the writers who have thoroughly examined antique art, Victor Cousin would seem the one with whom Delsarte had most in common, if this eminent philosopher were not a contemporary of the master and had not attended his lectures, his artistic sessions and his concerts. In his manner of treating art, this is often shown bywords and forms and flashes of instinctive reminiscence which recall the great school. In his book, "The True, the Beautiful and the Good" (edition of 1858), the learned professor writes: "The true method gives us a law to start from man to arrive at things. All the arts, without exception, address the soul through the body."

He is on the way, but his position embraces neither the starting-point, which is the law, nor any practical means toward an end. For the rest, the nearer his propositions approach the law of Delsarte, the easier it becomes to establish the radical differences which separate them. Delsarte does not say that "the law is to start from man to arrive at things," but that "man uses his corporeal organs to manifest himself in his three constituent modalities,--physical, mental and moral."

It is very certain that works of art, like all concrete forms, can only be perceived by the senses. Who does not know this? But that which is most difficult to comprehend, is the just relation of cause to effect--as to the faculty and its manifestation,--and it is this which Delsarte discovered and made clear. The one stated the action of art when perceived; the other, the necessities of the artist in order that art respond to the law.

I shall have more than once to render justice to Victor Cousin. Inheritor of the Greek philosophers, he allows dialectics too great margin. He wanders in his premises and arrives at his conclusions--when he can. (Here, of course, I speak only of art.) In philosophy, Cousin, beginning with effects, from induction to induction, often arrives at causes and states some principles. Delsarte, perhaps, proceeded thus while seeking to combine his discoveries, but this accomplished, he placed in the first line, synthesis, whence all emanates, and this focus of light radiating in all directions, illumines even to its farthest limit, the vast field of æsthetics. Cousin, after all, claims neither for the Greeks nor for himself the discovery of a law.

Proudhon, who represented the Protagorean school among us, humoring his whim, produced a work on art. In this he declares that he has very little gift in æsthetics, and asserts himself a dialectician, and we cannot deny his power in logic while he regards things from a proper stand-point. Very well! Proudhon challenged the Academy "to indicate a method"--with even more reason might he have said law of æsthetics.

Shall we, at last, find among the true critics of French literature any synthetic basis which may guide us in all branches of art? What do I find in "The Poetic Art," by Boileau, the great authority of the Augustan age,--rhetoric, beautiful verses, full of excellent counsel? I find there wisely arbitrated rules, a sieve through which it would be well to pass the works of our own times, including the verdicts which distribute the glory.

But the means of putting into practice these valuable precepts--the criterion to establish their truth, the touchstone which may distinguish the pure gold--does not appear! In default of these means of certitude, each may, according to his instinct or his pride, insist that he has fulfilled the conditions prescribed by the author of the Lutrin, and judge his rivals by the sole authority of his prejudices.

La Harpe and his followers have distributed praise and blame, and at the same time said what should be done, but they have given no how.

More grievous still are the meanderings of the critics of our public journals. They wander without compass and without rudder, approving or condemning according to their friendships and antipathies; save those connoisseurs émérites, whose fine, sure taste and exceptional erudition are rarely able to supply a law and state a reason for their judgment.

Among us, as among the Greeks, may be found artists who have given proofs of the existence of the supreme theory of which I now write. Talma and Malibran--in another order, Déjazet, and Frederick Lemaître, even Thérésa herself, have, in a greater or less degree, exemplified this law imprescriptable. These artists, marked by nature with the seal of their vocation, possessed that force of truth which produces sudden bursts of eloquence, great dramatic effects; in a word, as before expressed, "the happy strokes of genius."

Yes, before and after Delsarte, there were and shall be beings conforming by instinct to his law. But with him alone shall rest the honor of its discovery and first teaching, and of the establishment of the science upon strong foundations.

It remains for me to examine the relations between the workings of Delsarte and those who have treated the same questions concerning the terms (according to him, accessory), the True, the Good and the Beautiful; and also to consider the value of each branch of æsthetics in the entirety of the system.

Chapter VII.
The Elements Of Art.

The True, the Good, the Beautiful.

Though Delsarte be acknowledged the discoverer of the law of æsthetics, he may have held points in common with many who before him had had presentiments of its coming and had instinctively experienced its force. Premonitions precede the discovery as complements should follow.

The True, the Good, the Beautiful, constituent elements of æsthetics, have been diversely interpreted. From his intellectual observatory, a zenith whence the artist-philosopher viewed clearly the whole and the details, he may be supposed to have gained light beyond any which could have come to his predecessors.

I will, then, resume my parallel from this point of view.

The True, the Good and the Beautiful were not made, in the school of Delsarte, objects of special teaching. By definitions, reflections and illustrations of the master, they were shown to enter fully into the science and method--a part of it distinguishable and inseparable. The master, in his demonstrations, commonly employed various well-known maxims which were always accredited to their authors. Thus, from Plato: "The Beautiful is the splendor of the True." From St. Thomas Aquinas, in regard to science: "In creation all is done by number, weight and measure." From St. Augustine (for he often quoted from sacred works): "Moral beauty is the brilliancy of the Good."

But I must proceed in order. I owe it to the sincerity of my endeavor to explain first the æsthetic work of Delsarte as shown me by his own teachings.

The True.

The True Illuminates the Thought.

To determine the signification of the True, we must first ask what is truth? It has been defined as: "A fixed principle, an axiom." The term truth has been applied to such or such maxims; but there are few assertions not subject to discussion or which would be accepted as decisive without comment. They have not that piercing clearness which determines conviction by simple apprehension or at first sight.

The dictionary of the Academy is more explicit in its statement: "Truth is the conformity of the idea to its object." But a preferable definition is that of Madame Clémence Royer: "Truth is the concept of the spirit in regard to the reality of things and the laws which govern them." This philosophical statement is readily adapted to the True in the arts, which is acquired by the observation of nature and adaptation of the lawful ideal.

How, then, may we recognize the True in æsthetics according to this definition? The artist, first and above all, should disregard no law of nature, but when he aspires to great works, "the concept of his spirit in regard to the reality of things and their laws" should lead him to idealize what he sees, translating his personal conception of the Beautiful and the Sublime, if his flight carry him so far.

The word Art is more comprehensive in that which it expresses, than the word True. Art completes itself by its other elements, the Beautiful and the Good. Plato, and the philosophers in general, treated of truth from the stand-point of philosophy rather than of art. Still the great Athenian seemed to believe in a sort of celestial museum, where the artist, penetrating by intuition, was inspired by a vision, more or less clear, of the masterpieces of divine conception.

Delsarte approached in a certain sense this very idea, but his doctrine of the True in art, although depending upon the mystic basis of a holy Trinity, brought forth developments both rational and scientific which leave far behind the Platonic hypothesis.

In the system of Delsarte it is no longer a vague ideal dimly perceptible, which must guide the artist in the execution of his work, for the innovator says expressly that "the divine thought is written in man himself." It is therefore at the command of every one who seeks truth to make it manifest in art. In the new system, man being at once the artist and object of art, literary men, sculptors and painters proceed from a basis ever to be observed and studied, to rise from the True to the Ideal. Here the flight must be more rapid and, above all, less deceptive than the purely mystic fancy of Plato.

We shall see in considering the Beautiful in the arts, that far from giving rise to arbitrary and fantastic conceptions, the great ideal must become, according to the science and method of the master,--the aggrandizement and the harmony of the faculties of the human being.

The Good.

The Good Sanctifies the Soul.

What is the Good in art? Here again the philosophical standard bars the way and demands priority. What, then, is Good independent of varied feelings and of all the varied and contradictory interests of human subjectivity which encumber it in the minds of the multitude of thinking people?

The Good, after this elimination, is reduced or rather elevated to one simple idea, so general and requisite is it. The Good seems to be that which can give to the greatest number of beings, existing in the universe (conformably to their hierarchy), the greatest sum of happiness and perfection, considering, for humanity, the importance of the mutual relations of the faculties. If this be true of the Good in life, is not a way clearly traced for art, whose mission is to embellish existence? And, further, if it be incontestable, that man cannot transgress the laws of his nature without wronging his intelligence and his happiness, even his strength and beauty, how shall art merit our love and homage if its power be exerted to excite inferior faculties and subversive passions? Are not poise and harmony the best conditions of existence for the human organism? That which Plato demanded for the Beautiful in favor of the True--namely, splendor--Delsarte demanded also of art in favor of the Good. His thought is summed up in this formula, "Man is the object of art." Man, being artist, becomes the agent of æsthetics. Man, in his humanity, is the goal toward which should tend all the efforts and experiments of the art-moralizer.

The master maintained the possibility of reaching this end by two opposing ways, not contradictory; i.e., the production of the Beautiful under its physical, mental and moral forms; and by the manifestation of the Ugly under the same forms, exhibiting what he called the hideousness of vice. Immorality may be rendered poetical and artistic, because of its being a corruption of the moral, often preserving the imprint of its origin, even throughout its greatest errors. Its agitation, its combats and its defeats interest the judgment and the heart. The Ugly or unseemly, morally speaking, is the synonym of vice.

The Ugly in the language of the arts has many diverse significations. It is in these shades and variable proportions that it affects our subject, but the depicting of repulsive things, foreign to morality, to sentiment and to passion, has no right to exist in æsthetics. It may be possible to cure a vice by showing its hideousness. But does this warrant such exciting of the disgust of the senses? It is an outrage to the worship of the Beautiful, without compensation of any kind.

There can be no advantage to humanity in exhibiting the hideousness of disease or the monstrosities of certain natural phenomena! Open to them the museums of comparative anatomy, but close the galleries consecrated to the fine arts! There exist also monstrosities which are not included in these categories; they present no moral danger, but are disagreeable and repulsive to good taste. They consist of fantastic forms, in accordance with the spirit of an inferior civilization, reminding one of the misshapen and gigantic prehistoric animals, whose bones astound us, and which disappeared from our globe that man might appear.

Among cultivated contemporaries these eccentricities spring from an inclination toward originality, caprice, grotesque taste; from a similar impulse to that which directs literature toward burlesque and parodies, and the plastic arts toward caricature. Such productions may please some distinguished and intelligent natures which cannot have been highly favored in the distribution of the delicacies of sentiment and the exquisite graces of wit. In a word, the art indulging in this class of manifestations acts according to the mode simpliste. I borrow this term from Charles Fourier, and I say once for all, that by it I mean not the entire, but the almost exclusive predominance of one or the other of the modalities of the human being. Here the simplisme being altogether intellectual, while it is inferior to manifestations in which the being expands harmoniously, it wounds no essential in the synthesis of the me; while a predomination of the sensual to the same degree is most pernicious to that which delights in it and antipathetic to those who do not live solely in the material aspects of existence.

Existing among the elements of æsthetics, as the faculties of man, are certain dependencies, connections, affinities, penetrations, which render an abstraction of one of them almost impossible. Thus I have anticipated allusions to the Beautiful in considering the Good. By thus connecting them, the better to distinguish them, I have reached the conclusion that moral evil should never be manifested in the arts unless with the view of redressing it. In this case the better its real characteristics are studied, the more strongly they are accentuated throughout, the more successful the work will be from the plastic point of view, and the more power it will have to repel those inward wrongs which it denounces, and this even though the intention of the artist should not touch this result.

The Beautiful.

The Beautiful Purifies the Emotions.

At first glance, it might seem the privilege of each one to say, "The Beautiful is that which appears to me as such." I believe in this regard, that the most capable artist, should he be also the most perfect logician, would never be able to persuade sainted and simple ignorance that it should not remain firmly grounded upon faith in its own impressions.

Place Hugo, Mercié, Bonnat, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Joncières in the presence of simple countrymen--or, what is worse still, of inferior artists and critics, of pretentious amateurs--and you will see by what supercilious, incredulous gestures, being incapable of argument, this satisfied ignorance will repel all assertions of the great authorities.

Should we, therefore, disregard this reluctance to recognize the features of the Beautiful in great works? We must at least deduce from it the fact that the effect of art depends upon some relation between the observer and the thing observed.

Notwithstanding the reality of the beauties of such or such a work, in the eyes of many appreciators, the subjectivity of each observer should remain decisive, vis-à-vis to himself, as long as he cannot be convinced by the authority of a law; and, finally, it is imperative that his comprehension of that law should be rendered possible by preliminary studies. On the contrary, shall that which has been recognized as beautiful by the initiated ever since artists created, and enlightened criticism discussed and judged it, appear now before uncultivated criticism as without authority?

In default of law and science, there is a sort of universal consent among competent thinkers; and their appreciation of the highest class of works is maintained by a process of adhesion carried on by every conversion from ignorant blindness to the light of appreciation.

The question of subjectivity in the declared judgments in æsthetics has given rise to incessant controversies which began, perhaps, among the Greeks and are going on among us. Though no absolute decision has been reached, some excellent maxims have resulted. In default of an irrefutable definition of the Beautiful, there have been given us images, analogies and thoughts upon the subject which approach and prepare for such definitions:

Victor Cousin has said: "It is reason which decides as to the Beautiful and reduces it to the sensation of the agreeable, and taste has no further law."

"Aversion accompanies the Ugly (unseemly) as love walks hand in hand with the Beautiful."

"The Beautiful inspires love profound but not passionate."

"The artist perceives only the Beautiful where the sensual man sees only the attractive or frightful."

And, again, "That is sublime which presents the idea of the Infinite."

This last thought brings us to Delsarte, who, perhaps, was its inspiration.

The following valuable thoughts of the master, while not related scientifically to his system, are still allied to its physical and philosophical aspects:

"Form," says the innovator in æsthetics, "is the vestment of substance; it is the expressive symbol of a mysterious truth; it is the stamp of a hidden virtue, the actuality of being; in a word, form is the plastic of the Ideal."

"The Beautiful is the transparency of the aptitudes of the agent, and it radiates from the faculties which govern it. It is order which results from the dynamical disposition of forms."

"Beauty is the reason which presides at the creation of things; it is the invisible power which draws us and subjugates us in them."

"The Beautiful comprises three characters, which we distinguish under the following titles: Ideal, moral and plastic beauty."

By the enunciation of these three categories, Delsarte enters upon the positive aspect of his system. As the result of the careful examination of the aptitudes or faculties of the Ego, approachable by analysis and applied to æsthetics, he has established this first class of manifestations (ideal beauty) as requisite to art. This must result from a combination of the faculties; the possibilities of combination being infinite, but always in subjection to the human being. The artist, according to this personal power of inspiration, should be able to portray a totality of superior and harmonious qualities, such as will oblige any competent observer to recognize it as beautiful. We have taken a step into the realm of the Ideal; that is to say, we have touched that which, without departing from the law, surpasses conventional rule and the natural types accepted for the Beautiful.

Before following the Ideal into its ethereal region, we will further consider the nature of its foundation, which is a combination of the three mother faculties which Delsarte declares to be, in æsthetics, the criterion of the law and the foundation of the science. We already recognize these as the physical, mental and moral aspects of the human being.

The plastic art allies itself particularly to the physical constitution, but the physique cannot be perfectly beautiful unless it manifests intellectual and moral faculties.

Moral and intellectual beauty reveal themselves in the human being under the empire of passion and of sentiment, and the physique is momentarily transformed. The artist should seize beauty at this moment of fullest perfection, above the normal conditions of human existence and perhaps beyond possible plastic beauty.

Behold what glorious possibility for the direction of the artist's aspirations toward the Beautiful! But even this happy chance by no means includes all of the possible conceptions of the Ideal, and neither does it furnish us any absolute idea or definition. This vision of beauty, made ideal by exaltation of the intelligence and the emotion, can only be perceived by the artist of practiced observation and of that intuitive perception which is the gift of nature.

Again considered, the Ideal, being relative as well as the Beautiful, of which it is the exuberance, we must remember that the word is far from corresponding to an idea of absolute beauty. Thus the Ideal of an ordinary taste is not so high as that of a person whose standard of beauty is superior, and the two will be very distant from the image conceived by the pen, the chisel or the brush of a great artist. In many cases the Ideal is nothing but a searching for the intention of nature, obliterated by the circumstances and accidents of life. Then the task of the artist should be to reëstablish the type in his logic--a vulgar face may be portrayed by a skilful brush--and, while preserving its features, there may be put into it the culture of intellect and noble sentiments.

An artist, for instance, will see in a woman, whom time has tried, certain elements of beauty which enable him to portray her nearly as she was at the age of twenty years. He should be able to divine in the young girl, according to the normal development of her features, her appearance at the complete unfolding of her beauty. Yes; in these different cases the artist shall have idealized, since he shall have comprehended, penetrated, interpreted and rectified nature. Still, he may not yet have attained to the comprehension of perfect beauty, such, at least, as human emotion and intellect can conceive, and such as we love to imagine as inhabiting the superior spheres of the universe of which we know nothing further than the dictate of our reason, namely, that they are inhabited by beings more or less like ourselves.

When these sublime effects appear in art, it is as though a veil were torn, revealing glimpses of a world of ideas, emotions and impressions, surpassing our comprehension, approachable only by our aspirations.

Thus, Delsarte, superior to his science, has shown us the artist in full possession of all that he has acquired, and the inmost charm of that which is revealed to him. In execution he proved this truth: If talent may be born of science, it is genius which distinguishes the highest personalities, and to merit the title of high artistic personality one must contain in himself an essence indescribable, unutterable, which constitutes the aureole of grand brows, and the sign luminous of great works of art.

Thus, as virtue, art has its degrees.

Art, in its most simple expression, is the faithful representation of nature. If the conception of a work or of a type is elevated to a degree of perfection which satisfies at once the plastic sense, the emotion and the intellect, we will call it Grand Art.

Finally, if, in the presence of a creation, we recognize perfect harmony (which goes beyond perfect proportion); if the work call forth in us that contemplative ecstasy which gives us the impression and, as it were, the vision of pure beauty, shall we not recognize Supreme Art?

The system of Delsarte responds to all these desiderata of æsthetics. In his law he gives us the necessary bases; by his science he indicates the practical means, by his method and illustrations he completes the science and demonstrates the law. Where is place left for doubt or contradiction?

He stated what he knew and how he had learned it. In his recitals occurred innumerable beautiful proofs of his greatness and simplicity, oftentimes more convincing than lengthy, involved argument could ever be.

Some may ask: How can a positive science lead toward an ideal which cannot be touched, heard not seen? Would not this science be the antipode (some would say antidote) of the mystic dreams of Plato and of Delsarte himself?

Reply is easy. Delsarte recognized in our mental consciousness that desire for research into the unknown which would sound the mysteries of nature. He did not disregard that intuitive force of imagination which can often form from simple known elements the concept of conditions superior to the tangible.

Between this nature, which we hear and see and touch, and that nature which the artist feels, imagines, and to which he aspires, Delsarte has placed a ladder whose base is among us, and whose summit is lost in the infinite spaces of fiction and poesy. By this ascent into the realm of liberty, of personality and of genius, the elect of æsthetics shall mount and gain, and, still maintaining their relations with the Real, shall bring down to us the glorious trophies of their art.

Delsarte, foremost among men, had climbed the magic ladder. His exquisite harmonies in the dramatic art and lyric declamation were beautiful indeed, but the æsthetic beauties which he brought forth in the roles that he interpreted, must, alas! disappear with him. He has left us the bases of his science, but who shall so beautifully tread the way--reigning by song amidst a thousand accents of devoted enthusiasm!

Chapter VIII.
Application of the Law to the Various Arts.

We have now to consider each branch of æsthetics in the totality of the system, to be assured whether or no this law discovered by Delsarte covers all departures in the domain of art. First, then, the starting-point around which all is centered and from which flow all developments.

"Man is the object of art." This proposition applies as readily to the conception of literature, poetry and the plastic art as to the more active manifestations of the dramatic, oratorical or lyric art. Man being thus the object of art in all of its specialties, the part of the artist is to manifest that which is revealed to him, through his three essential modalities,--physical, moral and intellectual (in the words of Delsarte, life, soul and spirit, with the divisions and subdivisions that they allow), as has been clearly stated in the chapter upon "The Law of Æsthetics," and further confirmed in the one upon "The Bases of the Science." But though all of these primordial modalities appear in each concept and in all artistic manifestations, the proportion in which each appears is indefinitely variable. It is a predominance of one or another of these which classifies and specializes. It is the harmony, more or less perfect, of the components of this triple unity which determines the value of artistic manifestations. Under this law, then, come all of the arts, inasmuch as each, differing in subjects treated and in means of execution, still has a common mission, namely, the revelation of impressions, the intelligible expression of the thoughts and feelings of man. To be more clearly understood, I will from this point consider separately the different branches of æsthetics.

Art--Dramatic, Lyric and Oratorical.

The proclivities necessary to an artist, actor or orator (intelligence being the first consideration and beauty of minor importance) are: expansion, sensibility or at least impressionability; a ready comprehension of the works to be interpreted, if not the requisite capacity to execute them. One's particular vocation (or congenial line of work) is the first condition in either of these departments of art, and into the consideration of this must enter that of physical beauty such as the roles demand; always considering what has been named "the physique" of the situation. In a word, these three aspects of art correspond to the predominance of that modality which Delsarte calls "life;" this with the complementary share of the other essentials to maintain a symmetry; this for the average "chosen." As to the individuality necessary for the creation of a rôle, general statements cannot apply. It is one and entire for each. Should it reproduce itself identically, it would no longer be individual. The strength of a powerful individuality lies in the revelation of a type sui generis.

Thus Delsarte can never be reproduced. If by an impossibility an artist having seen him, and being penetrated by his method, could assimilate the sum total of his acquired qualities and his inmost purposes, still he could be but a copy, however perfect, since personality cannot be transmitted. I could not pursue the demonstration of the application of the laws of the human organism to the generality of the liberal arts without meeting an objection which we will consider just here. Some one says: If the law of art is the same as that of the human constitution, what need that Delsarte teach that law--will it not suffice for each artist-nature to study himself in order to determine satisfactory means of transmitting (to spectators, audiences or readers) the thoughts, passions or emotions which he would reveal, either by his pen, his chisel, his brush, or by the fictitious personages which he incarnates? I answer, No! The expression of nature by gesture, face, or voice will not come to the artist by inspiration nor by reflection, especially in extreme situations. He may chance upon agreeable effects, and even moving expressions, but rarely does a just and telling expression of that which he would express result from mere chance. Caustic truth or knack--more vulgarly, cheek--comes of influence outside of one's self. Upon one occasion Madame Pasta was heard to say: "I would be as touching as that child in her tears. I should, indeed, be a great artist if I could imitate her."

Rare, indeed, are the artists who know how to weep. The sublimity of art responds to nature's simplest impulses. By the study and work of Delsarte a science has been created, every fleeting sign of emotion has been fixed, and may be reproduced at will; and this for the instruction of the artist who may never have observed them in another, nor himself felt the impressions which give rise to them.

Application of the Law to Literature.

It is hardly necessary to state that the predominance of one of the primordial faculties in the actor would necessarily differ from that in the author of the drama or opera which he would interpret. Literary capability presupposes more or less of philosophical aptitude and a predominance of the intellectual faculties, and this not to the exclusion of a certain amount of artistic and moral development in the truly great writers. It is in the field of literature especially, that man attains to a creation; and whether his object be a fellow-creature or an extended and enlarged ideal,--in either and any case facts have furnished repeated and incontestable evidence, in support of the statement of Delsarte, that art is always defective unless it be the product of the three essential modalities of being, acting in their relative proportions. This statement is not to be contested; but here again these relations would vary among the writers upon science, ethics and poetry.

The epic, most synthetic of literary productions, is no longer in fashion, because, perhaps, of the growing rarity of heroes. On the contrary, simplisme is now deforming the greatest germs in the drama and romance. The weakness often lies in the morality of the production, or rather in its lack of morality, often so lacking that the author sinks to the level of producing repulsive works and cynical pictures.

In view also of man's essential faculties, but from another point of view, St.-Simonianism classed men as scholars, artists and artisans. Then were added the priests of a new order whose nature, more perfectly balanced, was to furnish the model type of future humanity. This classification had brought thinking people to the consideration and criticism of a system isolating and concentrating all development upon one or another of the faculties. It was readily seen that thus sentiment would rush to folly; sensibility without a corrective would soon become weakness; unbalanced industry would lead to disregard of health and strength, while the triviality of the sensual nature, unrestrained by mental or moral activity, would soon fall into hopeless degradation. Herein was simplisme most bitterly condemned. Delsarte, ever studying relations between coincidences in art and the revelations of nature, arranged a typical demonstration, as ingenious as logical, of the action and play of opposing faculties. By most wonderful pantomime he showed a man tempted to sin; then, touched by pity for the victim of his desire, at last transformed by the intervention of the moral sense, he came by slow gradations to most elevated sentiments. One saw clearly the courage of resistance and triumph in the sacrifice. Then, taking an inverse progression, he slid from this height to the opposite extreme of culpable resolutions.

Delsarte was the author of this mute scene which contains the elements of a drama. The contemplation of this wonderful effect leads to the conviction of the great value to literature of the fundamental law, which may be applied to any and all literature, as a permanent criterion by which productions may be classified and judged, in their departure from the simpliste form and approach to a conception in which the constituent modalities of being act in harmonious accord. Here, again, we have a fresh distinction between scientific and ethical literature, and that which may be termed the literature of art. To this latter class belong romances, dramatic productions and poems--works made up of shades of meaning and just proportions, which should be based on clear and sound philosophy, prudently disguised but indisputable and imperishable. Here is place for the grace of an agreeable wit and the elegant flexibility of a fruitful pen. More imperative than in any other class of writing is the demand for individual touch and that harmony of construction depending upon the proportionate relations of those elements of æsthetics,--the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Thus, through æsthetics, it is elevated.

To this literature of art belong the sonnet of Arvers, and "The Soul," by Sully-Prudhomme. Musset, in his grace or pathos, is not inferior to Victor Hugo. There are, even in his faults, certain effective boldnesses to which the author of "Nôtre Dame de Paris" cannot aspire. Whence, then, comes the immense distance between these poets? It lies in the fact that Victor Hugo, while he is a finished artist, shows himself also a thinker, philosopher, man of science and erudition. Endowed with a profound humanitarian feeling, he is preoccupied with the evils of society, with its rights, its mistakes, its tendencies and with their amelioration; while the poet of "Jacques Rolla"--a refined sensualist--devotes his verse to the unbridling of the torments of imagination in delirium, to the agitations of hearts which have place only for love.

If comparison be made between novelists and dramatists of diverse schools, why has not M. Zola, who in so many regards should be considered a master, attained the heights of eminence upon which are enrolled the names of Shakespeare, Molière, Corneille, Schiller, Madame de Staël, and George Sand? It is because M. Zola, profound analyst and charming narrator, even more forcibly than Musset breaks the æsthetic synthesis by the absence of morality in his writings. His fatalism arrests the flight of that which would be great; he corrupts in the germ wonderful creative powers! M. Zola's great lack lies in his considering in man his physical nature only. Between mind and matter he holds a magnifying lantern full upon the lowest molecules, and rejects disdainfully the initiating atom that Leibnitz has signalized as the centre of life. M. Zola has created a detestable school which already slides into the mire beneath the weight of the crimes which it excites and the disgust which it arouses. Should we blame Zola and his disciples for the danger and the impotence of this method? Should we not impute the wrong in greater measure to philosophical naturalism?

In considering materialism and naturalism let us not lose sight of the fact that while materialism is simpliste, naturalism (in so much as it represents nature) is essentially comprehensive and necessarily synthetic; harmony of force and matter being an invariable requisite of life.

Realism, another term strangely compromised, seems to proclaim itself under the banner of materialism, while the Real, implying the idea of the True, cannot be contained in simplisme. It is a most pernicious evil that writers, calling themselves realistic, still concentrate their talent upon the painting of vicious types and characters drawn in an infernal cycle of repulsive morals.

"Man is the object of art." Never could the words of the master more appropriately interpose than before the encroachments of literary simplisme. The man of whom Delsarte speaks is not confined to such or such a category of the species. He proposes that æsthetics should interpret an all-comprehensive human nature, which is not made up alone of baseness, egotism and duplicity. Though it be subject to perversion, it has its luminous aspects, its radiant sides, and we should not too long turn our eyes from them.

Artistically, evil or the Hideous (which is also evil) should never be used except as a foil. There is no immorality in exhibiting the prevailing vices of the epoch, but this is the physician's duty. The evil lies in presenting these evils under such forms as may lead many to enjoy or tolerate them, giving them the additional power of a charming style and the specious arguments of fatality. This is precisely the case of M. Zola. The glamor of his disturbing theory, which annihilates free will, gives to his works a philosophical appearance. He conceals its vacuity beneath forms of a highly-colored style, an amiable negligence and a facility that is benumbing to thought. As he asserts nothing, no one dreams of contradicting, and one finds himself entwined in a network of repulsive depravity without a ray of healthful protection or correction. In comparison with the blight of this disastrous system of fatality, the coarseness of the writer's language, so loudly censured, is relatively unimportant. The simplisme of M. Zola is not absolute, as but one of the three constituent modalities is omitted, that one being morality. The lack is, however, no less fatal, inasmuch as the void produced by the absence of one of the noblest faculties of human activity must usually be filled by disturbing forces.

I have heard the theory, "art for art," supported by men otherwise very enlightened. "An artistic production need not contain a moral treatise," they say, and this is quite true, provided the artist be a quick observer, possessing talent sufficient to handle his subject harmoniously. Vice carries its own stigma, and pure beauty surrounds itself with light. The author should be able readily to distinguish the one as well as the other, and his precepts should come as the harmonious result of his experience. But such a work, at the mercy of an ill-balanced brain and unhealthful temperament, must yield bad fruit. Talent without broad and true knowledge of reality, or that which is, instead of being invented, is incomplete in its workings and results. Its creations resemble the light of the foot-lamp, of fireworks, of the prodigies of our modern pyrotechnists--pleasing for a time, dazzling, captivating, intoxicating! But lost in the life-giving beauty of a summer's night or a glorious sunset, we are tempted to cry out with the poet,--

"Nothing is beautiful but the True."

What can be said of the other simplisme which, in its search for the True, ignores the Beautiful while it disregards the Good? Again, its partisans seek artistic truth in its very worst conditions. Why paint in full sunshine, if the intense light obliterates details and confuses the shadows? Does it seem a difficulty conquered? It is far oftener a disguised insufficiency. If my reference to painting seem premature, it is because I wished to borrow an image to show how equally grievous was the faulty touch of many of our writers of renown. Many among them seem striving to propagate the culture of the Mediocre and Unseemly, as a thousandfold easier practice than the religion of the Beautiful.

My present aim is to show clearly the influence of even incomplete simplisme, in certain pernicious effects upon literature. Edgar A. Poe entered the realm of the fanciful after Hoffman, and how is it that the initiator is less dangerous than his disciple? It is because of these two simplistes, who have put reason out of consideration, the first addressed himself only to the imagination, while the American poet sounded the emotions to depths where terror is awakened and madness begins to sting. Hoffman has perhaps upon his conscience some readers confined in asylums for the deranged, but the far more perilous hallucinations of Poe must account for greater harm. The distance is great between imagination and sentiment, and should be so regarded. This extravagance should surely not be allowed to usurp the place of morality, but this is what is done, and greatness is not for them.

Another illustration lies in the transition intermediate between the romances of Balzac, Frederic Soulié, Emile Souvestre, and Eugène Sue, and the poetry of Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Béranger, Barbier and the impressionalist school whose decline is already at hand.

Of many names, which have acquired notoriety, I select the two which afford the best contrast,--Charles Baudelaire and Jules de la Madelène. The first, among other eccentric works, has left us "The Blossoms of Evil." In the ideas which it embraces it is the successful production of an imagination misled and in distress; a pathological experience probably prompted the conception. In it one reads beautiful verse of scholarly construction, and readily perceives an individuality and originality of thought and expression; but no one would predict or desire that this production should pass to posterity.

"Le Marquis des Saffras," by Jules de la Madelène, on the contrary, gratifies both judgment and feeling. It is a spirited painting, acute and profound, as well as true, of human life, especially of provincial life. The human being is revealed in all his aspects. Though the author disguises neither errors nor weaknesses, he presents clearly the redeeming side--the simple manners and the humble devotion of sincere hearts. This, then, is the reason why, sustained by a style rich in grace and strength, full of the breath of poetry which is felt rather than described, "Le Marquis des Saffras" holds its place as an incontestable masterpiece in the choice libraries that preserve the renown of great writers.

A more careful examination of the doctrine of Delsarte--"The necessity of the concurrence of the mother modalities of the human organism to fulfil the conditions of æsthetics"--but forces the conviction that disregard of this requirement renders all sterile and incomplete, if not monstrous. Is this equivalent to saying that the deductions from the law of Delsarte tend to condemn in French literature its simple gaiety, its graceful lightness, and to efface this stamp of the race that our ancestors have surely imprinted?

In works of the imagination the omission of moral meaning is often more seeming than real, and every good reader should be able to recognize this. However, this negligent seeming is far less hurtful than brilliant wit concealing crudities and modifying boldnesses. Writers of this class do not lose sight of the fact that, while the French character has its audacities (contrary to the modifications of æsthetics), our language possesses a proverbial chastity, which, even in its farthest wanderings, genius comprehends and respects. Tact and taste suffice to him who consults them to escape grossness of language. The delicacy of the allusions leaves their images in a transparent mist; the very elasticity of the equivocation furnishes a refuge for the thought which it disquiets.

By art some most delicate subjects, very nearly approaching license, have been pardoned. We would surely exhibit a tyrannical and morose humor to condemn to be burned en place de Grève, by the hand of the executioner, the romances of Manon Lescaut, and Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, as they have been transmitted to us by Paul Louis Courier.

But when literature, realistic or materialistic (or whatever they please to call it), freeing itself from moral accompaniment, shows itself negative or weak in its creations; if it be simpliste to the point of appealing exclusively to the senses, limiting its means of action to the development of the egotistic and instinctive side of the human passions,--its works have no longer right of consideration in æsthetics. The consideration of the physical being should surely figure in all representations of life, but it is not necessary that from a subordinate consideration it should ever be made all-governing. The body, the essential part of our personality, is the companion of our higher faculties. We should be mindful of it, making it as beautiful as possible, but giving it the reins would be even worse than giving power absolute to the imagination.

Once more, impressionalism, without the control of science and of reason, has nothing to claim in the spheres of the True, the Good, the Beautiful.

Application of the Law to Architecture.

The productions of architecture, like those of literature, have their origin in the realm of thought. Architecture is not, like the dramatic art, in subjection to the person of the artist. It is one of the plastic arts, and of them the most synthetic by reason of the number of agents concurring in its harmony. Its dependence upon form is akin to that of sculpture, while the value of color in its effects is only less than in the art of the painter.

This art, essentially comprehensive, demands of its masters varied knowledge and that power of coördination which, according to the learned philosopher Antoine Cros, is the highest function of the human intellect. The relation of æsthetics to the totality of the faculties is here more evident than ever. After the manifestation of mind in the composition of the plan, the architect's next duty is to please the eye. To this end he employs marble, stone, wood, bronze or gold, and the result is that element of the symphony which responds to sensation. The third and only remaining element of the trinity is sentiment. In order that, rising above its utilitarian purpose, appropriateness and mathematical rules of stability, the architect may fulfil the requisition of æsthetics and arrive at the "Grand Art," the remaining element as well as the other two must be perfected in result. The perfection of this element of sentiment is shown in the work by the impression of grandeur or elegance, of grace, severity or delicacy. The triple necessity thus filled, the result is truly a work of art.

Application of the Law to Sculpture.

The relation of Delsarte's system to sculpture has already been alluded to. Its application here lies principally in the realm of form. The sculptor aims to reproduce finest proportions of face and figure. He delights in a beautiful contour and, as Mengs has said, "in lines undulating and serpentine," while he studiously avoids all simple straight lines.

The more limited range of outlook demands more studied beauties and more significant expressions. The statue--unlike the monument, which at once arouses spontaneous emotions in the spectator--should express the human being, his sensations, his affections, his passions and struggles, and should arouse an enthusiasm of admiration while it awakens sympathetic echoes in the heart of the observer. Here more strikingly than ever must we recognize "Man the object of art." In the light of this truth we should demand of sculpture the manifestation of the human life with its constituent faculties, not in a perfectly equal accord which is never met in nature, but with such predominance as the subject presents.

In Greek art the predominance is of the physical aspect. They had before them exquisite models of plastic beauty; not the sensual beauty which is fleshly, but a plastic beauty consisting of harmony of line and form. Let us further consider this difference as shown in comparison of the Apollo and the Bacchus.

The Apollo satisfies alike the intellect and the eye by its beautiful outlines. [We are not yet ready to discuss beauty of expression.] The Bacchus less ideal and more humanly natural cannot so satisfy a highly æsthetic temperament. In neither work is there much of sentiment expressed. The distinctively moral side plays a secondary part, unless we consider beauty itself a moral factor,--a theory that may be sustained. In neither beautiful marble is there revealed any sensual dominance, though the Bacchus, notwithstanding its plastic superiority, rather inclines that way. The Apollo has been loudly extolled for the pride of its attitude and its divine calm in the encounter with the serpent Python; and still it is said that "a god could not have cause for so great pride in the conquest of a reptile." But the art-critics have exaggerated the import of the figure, which is wonderfully beautiful without being accurately expressive. The civilization of the new era has developed in man moral and physical qualities, which furnish new expressions by which the artist may set forth that part of human life which Delsarte called "the transluminous obscurities of our inmost organism." Dating from this epoch we find in sculpture less of plastic beauty and more spiritual and touching expression. Who would compare the pathos of the Laocoon to that of Canova's Magdalen? The sculptor Marcello (Mme. de Castiglione), too early removed from an artistic career, exhibited certain creations which illustrate this difference. Among them is a bust, in marble, of an Arab chief, which is after the style of the antique, beautiful lines, without expression (a predominance of the physical element). In her "Weary Bacchante" she shows beauty tarnished by vice, and here the predominant expression is sensual. But in her "Marie Antoinette in the Temple Prison," as in Mercié's "David" and the "Dying Napoleon," it is not the marvelous beauty which entrances us, but first and above this reigns the power of expression.

Sentiment is become predominant. In the "Marie Antoinette," what bitter disappointment! In the "Napoleon," what disillusion with the toys of the world in which he had reigned! In the "David"--Biblical subject treated by a modern chisel--what strange impressions and reflections are suggested by that tranquil head and the wonderful frailty of the body! how original the conception of the figure, and the whole a tribute to the high personality of the artist! Mercié shows not only the work accomplished, but in this are glimpses of promise of greatness to come which serve as more valuable proof of greatness than the masterpiece completed. This leads me to a reflection already often alluded to, but which I would keep ever before you as the foundation of my argument: "Man is the object of art." He is also the art-producer, and considering relatively the two terms of the proposition, the manifestations of the faculties are not necessarily adequate between the producer and the production. I will explain.

The best conditions under which an excellent work of art should be produced are undoubtedly the following: The conceiver possesses in the highest possible degree of development the modalities of being essential to the kind of creation undertaken, and these in their most perfect harmony; but this perfection of intensity and of the relations of the elements of the concept by no means necessitates the artist's formation of types at once morally, intellectually and physically artistic. This depends upon the truth of his subject. That he embellish it, whatever it may be, by his artistic interpretation and execution, is all that we should expect.

In the new manifestation which we now consider, where expression of sentiment is given predominance, the artist, interpreter of the passions, sentiments, weaknesses and vices as well as of the virtues and sympathies of humanity, must, in order to interest or chasten, show to it its own image, which reflection will be most frequently not an ideal of perfection but a type of suffering and vice, of weakness and depravity. A work will be successful in proportion as the chisel shall be most indefatigable in putting in relief the virtue or the vice which characterizes the subject. The greatest artist shall be he who renders most striking the characteristic predominance, whatever it may be, of the type created or interpreted. To sum up: Art is proportional to the faculties of the artist, and the work is the result of an application of these faculties to some special manifestation of the human ego.

Impressionalism, as in the other arts, should be considered in two aspects: the impression of the artist and that of the public or observer. The question then arises, what kind of a public should be impressed that the artist may merit a place in the higher ranks of æsthetics? While we have recognized that judgments in questions of art are the result of a certain sympathy existing between artist and observer, we have decided also that in considering such a question, all observers cannot be considered equal. In sculpture as in literature, where appreciators are possibly more numerous, we must admit that knowledge and capability or even sincerity are rarely of any weight in the balance of the grand juries of history or in the verdicts of contemporaries. The ignorant multitude sanction the grossest works because these only come within their understanding. Encouraged by the applause of numbers and by the lack of restraint which wins applause, artists descend the rounds of the ladder of progress which step by step has marked the ascent of the great schools and the great masters, and the result inevitably must be the return to mere sketches in sculpture, and painting will diminish to imagery. This end is quickly and readily reached, so easy and so fatal is the descent in these paths of decadence.

"All styles are good except the tedious," a well-known critic has said. Pursuing the import of this thought, we are led to the speedy conclusion that the null should never enter into competition. Nothing better than that the condition of priority should exist between diverse styles and opposite schools; but why strive to institute comparison between a synthetic idea and the absence of synthesis and idea, between certain proportions and harmony and the absence of proportion and harmony, between a style and the absence of style? Whatever the subject and whatever the mode of treating it, the intelligence of the artist should always be visible in his work.

I am more and more thoroughly convinced that the theory of Delsarte, fatal to simplisme, is the true theory of art. What can be more simpliste than impressionalism when viewed as a school? It considers no law or science, disregards entirely analysis and logic, the Good and the Beautiful; it is given over to sensation; vague impressions which are, whatever may be said to the contrary, only the inferior part of man's faculties, indispensable surely, but that which we have in common with the animals and little children; very interesting to observe among animals, a charming grace in children, but a most unimportant factor in adult existence, particularly in the artist's life, unless it be governed by the intellect and subject to the sanction of feeling.

Application of the Law to Painting.

If any art should be given over to impressionalism it seems as if it should be painting. To see and to transmit what is seen,--is not this the true office of the painter, his undoubted mission? Yes, on condition that the artist has the requisites for seeing correctly! And if he rises to composition, he must also be endowed with a creative intellect, with a portion of that mental power which will permit him to embrace a conception synthetically, and to coördinate its parts.

Among the impressionalists of our time, there are assuredly painters of talent; but what talent they possess is, as it were, against their will: the influence of tradition, the weight of the medium in which they live unconsciously restrain them. Then, it must be confessed, this impressionability of the artist has its intrinsic merits, if it is kept to its place and degree; but it must be regarded as certain, that if the simpliste artist makes himself distinct in his work, it is because he contains within himself more of the requisites for what he undertakes, and because, without his having summoned them, the faculties of the understanding and the æsthetic sense have come to his aid.

If Delsarte admitted the precept that "everything is perceived in the manner of the perceiver," he, of course, did not admit that every perceiver should make his own law: his conception of the æsthetic trilogy would never have permitted him to open this Babel for the vanity of ignorance.

To finish with simplisme or naturalism, let us say that, carried to its utmost extreme, it becomes a fixed idea, a monomania; has not impressionalism attained to this even in the choice of colors? It has been said of certain painters that they had only to upset their palette on the canvas to compose their pictures! Yet this varicolored chaos is not the characteristic of the school On the contrary, certain favorite colors prevail; do not green and violet rule almost exclusively in some of the most striking pictures from impressionalist brushes?

There are moments when we ask whether the impressionalists and their adherents are not obeying an impulse to contradict rather than a serious conviction. In either case, it is time for many of them to furnish proofs--that is to say, works,--in lack of the reasons which they have not even offered.

After this digression, forced upon me by recent scholastic quarrels, let us return to Delsarte.

I have given the reasons for his doctrine in other chapters; this doctrine will gain strength when I show what I have gathered from his science, since science and law mutually testify for each other; since all art, acquiring fresh vigor from its source, law, and enlightened by the aid of these same formulæ, must bear the impress of truth, beauty and goodness.

Even where color occupies in painting the place attributed to outline in sculpture, there are in these two manifestations of mental images--and in spite of the synthetism peculiar to painting,--striking similitudes.

As regards physical manifestations, both these arts should seek truth--which does not mean literal exactness,--and all that has been said of simplisme, in regard to sculpture, is perfectly applicable to that part of painting which treats of the human figure. Science and law lay down the same rules for both,--save for the differing modes of execution.

It is another matter when it is a question of representing nature as a whole, and under less limited forms: seas, mountains, the atmosphere and broad plains--landscapes of vast extent,--subjects forbidden to sculpture even more exclusively than simple compositions of several figures, which are seldom successful in sculpture. For if sculpture sometimes makes a group, if it is used to decorate monuments and tombs, it offers nothing analogous to those magnificent phases of nature which we find on the canvases of the great masters.

Delsarte, who from the laws of mimetics deduced for painters means of expressing correctly every impression and emotion which man can feel, taught nothing in regard to this special field of the landscape artist, who is not subject to the conditions of the actor, sculptor or orator. But, if this aspect of art--save in cases where figures are introduced--does not come under the head of certain statements of our science, not having to imitate attitude, gesture or voice--in a word, anything proceeding from the human organism,--it is, perhaps more closely than elsewhere, allied to the innovator's law: to that law which prompts the artist to respond to the psychical aspirations of his fellowmen, and demands that in satisfying the senses, he should also arouse or inspire the thought and feeling of beauty.

Thus the painter of nature, as much of a reality as man, but a reality in its own way, if he desires to make nature understood and loved, must give it the stamp of his own ideas, his own feelings, his own impressions.

Why should I care to be shown trees and waters, valleys and mountains, if the tree does not tell me of the coolness of its shade, if the water does not reveal the peace of the deep lake, if I cannot divine the rippling of the brook, if the valley does not make me long to plunge into its depths! Why recall to me the mountain, if its curves do not rouse in my mind any ideas of grace, elegance and majesty,--if its peaks do not make me dream of the Infinite!

However skilful the artist may be in the reproduction of form and the handling of color, he will always be far inferior to nature if his soul has never heard the inner murmur of all those mysteries of the sensitive, and I will venture to say, spiritual life, contained in forests, waterfalls and ravines. Lacking this initiation, he will play the cold and flavorless part of one who tells a twice-told tale; for it is in landscape especially, that talent consists in revealing the painter's own feeling.

The charm of things felt is not produced merely by a grand way of looking at things: the mind, the soul, occupy but little space; but where they figure, the canvas is well filled, and the brush betrays their presence.

I remember, in support of my thesis, that at one of the annual expositions at the Salon--which then represented the aristocracy of painting,--there was a tiny picture: a hut half hidden in moss and flowers. It was almost lost among the portraits of distinguished personages, the historic incidents, the scenes taken from fashionable life, and almost drowned in the bloody reflections from the vast display of battle pictures, which, as was then the custom, monopolized half the space.

Well! this canvas, a yard wide and not so long, held you captive, took your thought prisoner, and inevitably impressed itself on your memory. You longed to ramble over its thick turf; to enter that cottage whose open windows gave you the feeling that it was a peaceful shelter; you loved that poor simplicity, which seemed to hide happiness.

Certainly the author of this graceful, touching picture practiced Delsarte's law, at least from intuition.

Profound emotions are not always due to objective beauty; the beauty of the work is a thing apart from what it represents. Who does not recall, in another order of talent, this effect, due to the brush of Bonnat: an ugly, old Spanish woman is praying in a dark chapel; she prays with eyes, lips and soul. There was never seen more complete absorption, more complete forgetfulness of self in humble fervor. It was far more touching than all the types of sensual beauty, with pink and white and perfumed skins--with delicate limbs, in disagreeable attitudes!

This is, yet once again, due to the fact that sentiment is stronger than sensualism; and because the artist's skill, taking the place of beauty in his subject, becomes genuine æsthetic beauty: so much so that, looking at old age and ugliness--as represented by Bonnat,--the spectator is enchanted and applauds--the success of the work!

If, however, to perfect execution is allied beauty--not sensual, but æsthetic,--if it is made manifest from the point of view of form, feeling and thought, the enthusiasm will be still greater, because all the aims of art are realized at one and the same time.

Chapter IX.
Delsarte's Beginnings.

"The artist, a traveller on this earth, leaves behind imperishable traces of his being."--François Delsarte.

We would fain prolong the faintest rays of all that glitters and fades too soon, and if intense light is generated in a human brain, we strive to retain its every reflection. Nothing is indifferent which concerns the nature of the chosen few; great men belong to the annals of their nation, and history should be informed regarding them.

François Delsarte left this life at the moment when misfortune had crushed France beneath her iron heel for some ten years. The date of his death--July 20, 1871--partially explains the silence of the press on the occasion of so vast a social loss.

The circumstance of an artistic education, which was carried on in my presence, gave me opportunity to collect a mass of incidents and observations in regard to the great artist who is the object of this sketch.

I collected ideas in regard to his instruction, his method and his discovery of the laws of æsthetics, which are the more precious that nothing, or almost nothing, was published by him touching upon subjects of such supreme importance. It is my duty to tell what I know.

I have already established the bases of the work which I now undertake, in a pamphlet containing several articles published in various newspapers. These articles were written under the inspiration of the moment; they won the master's approval. I shall have frequent recourse to them to correct the errors of memory and give more vivid life to that now distant past.

Delsarte was born at Solesmes (Department of the North), November 9, 1811. His father was a practicing physician; but tormented by a genius for invention, he spent his time and money in studies and experiments. Then, when he succeeded in producing some mechanical novelty, some capitalist more used to trade and rich enough to start the affair, usually reaped all the profits. This condition of things, of course, produced great poverty in the family of the inventor, and the children's education suffered in consequence, and yet young François even then showed signs of superior endowments. A missionary, passing through Solesmes, said to him: "As for you, I don't know what you will turn out, but you will never be an ordinary man!" In spite of this, his parents intended him for trade, being unable to direct his talents toward science and the liberal arts.

Before proceeding farther, I must consider a question often asked in regard to the great artist, and concerning which his family have kindly informed me.

For a long time Delsarte signed his name in a single word, as I write it now; why, then, should we ever see it written with the separate particle, which seems to aim at nobility and which gives us the form, del Sarte? I will give you the tradition as it is told in Solesmes, and as the artist heard it during a visit to his native place. If it be fiction, it is not without interest, and I take pleasure in telling it.

The natives of Solesmes say that at a very remote period a great painter, coming from a distance, spent some time in their town. The good inhabitants of the place know nothing of the pictures which this master must have produced; perhaps they are quite as wide from his name! But Delsarte, struck by the probability of this poetic origin, filled with brotherly sympathy for the pure and graceful talent of Vannuchi del Sarto, doubted not that the latter was the artist whose memory is held sacred in Solesmes. Out of respect and veneration for the Italian master, he divided the syllables, but still retained the French termination of his name.

We can readily see that an imaginative spirit, such as we now have to deal with, would be carried away by the legendary side of this story, and that he would put full faith in his own commentaries:--he believed so many things!

To return to prose and to reality, I must add that Delsarte based his sentiment upon partial proof. Before the Revolution, the family did indeed sign themselves del Sarte; but an ancestor--imbued with the principles of 1789, and anxious to efface all suspicion of noble origin--effected a fusion of the two parts of the word, and left us the name as we have known it and as, perhaps, we regret it.

Those who regard this change of family name as mere vanity seem to me wide of the truth. A strange nobility, moreover, that of Vannuchi, surnamed del Sarto! Sarto may be translated as tailor; therefore Vannuchi del Sarto would mean: Vannuchi of the tailor, short for Vannuchi, son of the tailor.

What need had he of empty honors, he who was on equal terms with the great men of letters, science and the arts, who was surrounded by the incense of the most legitimate enthusiasm, and who received the homage of kings as of less value than the praises of Spontini and Réber!

I return to my sketch which will, I hope, justify these last remarks.

At the time of which we speak, the poor child was not treated as the predestined favorite of art, He had been entrusted to people who ill fulfilled their mission. He was scolded and abused; he was left destitute of the most necessary things. He felt this injustice, and, gifted with a precocious sensibility, he suffered greatly from it.

François had as a companion in misfortune, one of his brothers, who could not bear the hard life; born feeble, he soon succumbed. This was a severe trial to the future artist! When he saw his only friend buried in the common grave, he could not contain his grief.

"I rebelled," he tells us, "at the idea of losing all trace of this tomb. I shrieked aloud. I would not leave the mournful place!"

The grave-diggers took pity on his despair; they promised to mark the spot. The child resigned himself to fate and departed. I will let him speak for himself:

"I crossed the plain of St. Denis (it was in December); I had eaten little or nothing, and I had wept much. Great weakness combined with the dazzling light of the snow, made me dizzy. The fatigue of walking being added to this, I fell upon the damp earth and fainted dead away."

What followed may be explained by the ecstatic state often experienced on coming out of a fainting-fit.

"Everything seemed to smile into my half-open eyes; the vault of heaven and the iridescent snow made magical visions about me; the slight roaring in my ears lulled me like a confused melody; the wind, as it blew over the deserted plain, brought me distant, vague harmonies."

Delsarte interpreted what he saw in the light of Christian ideas: it seemed to him that the angels made this delightful concert to console him in his misery and to strengthen him to bear his hard lot.

Rising up, the child felt himself a musician. He soon evinced an utter contempt for the china painting to which he had been bound apprentice. That too was an art; but of that art, the angels had said nothing.

How was he to learn music?

He knew that by a knowledge of a very small number of signs, one could sing and play on instruments. He talked of this to all who would listen; he questioned and inquired:--

"Do you know music, you fellows?" he asked some school boys of his own age.

"A little," said some.

"Well! what do they teach you?"

"They teach us to know our notes."

"What notes?"

"Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si."

"What else?"

"That is all."

"Are there no more notes?"

"Not one!"

"How happy I am! I know music!" cried the delighted Delsarte.

"Cries of joy have their sorrows," said a poet. The child had uttered his cry of joy, and his torments were about to begin. Seven notes! It was a whole world; but what was he to do with them? He scarcely knew, although he was enchanted to possess the treasure. Could he foresee the revelations which art had in store for him? Still less could he predict those conquests in the realm of the ideal which cost him so many sleepless nights.

It must be confessed, superior talents bring suffering to their fortunate possessor. They console him on his journey, along the rough road down which they drag him; they sometimes reward one of the elect, but it is their nature to cause suffering.

And so François Delsarte was tempest-tossed while yet a child. He soon saw that his scientific baggage was but small; he felt that something unknown, something infinite, barred his passage, so soon as he strove to approach the goal which, in an outburst of joy, he fancied within his grasp. What hand would guide him to enter on the dazzling career which he had dimly foreseen? Where should he get books? Who would advise him?

Well! these impossible things were all found--in scanty measure, no doubt, and somewhat capriciously; but still the means for learning were provided for his greed of knowledge.

At first, his stubborn will had only the seven notes of the scale to contend with. He combined them in every possible way. He derived musical phrases from them; at the same time, he listened with all his ears to church music, to street musicians, to church organs and hand-organs.

In these first struggles with knowledge--we cannot call it science yet,--instead of bowing to the method of some master, Delsarte made a method for himself. Had it any resemblance to that which--with the progress of time,--his genius revealed to him? I cannot say, and probably the thought never occurred to him. However it may be, Delsarte said that he learned a great deal by this autonomic process: in fact, one who is restrained by nothing, who satisfies a passion instead of accomplishing a mere act of obedience, may enlarge his horizon and dig to whatever depth he sees fit. In this case, study is called research; if, by this method, one loses the benefit of the experience of others, he becomes more quick at discovery. Is not the puzzle which we work out for ourselves more readily remembered than the ideas which are merely learned by heart?

A wise man, a disciple of Socrates--who has been greatly ridiculed, but by whose lessons the science of pedagogy has greatly profited,--Jacotot, gave similar advice to teachers: "Put your questions, but let the scholar think and work out his answers instead of putting them into his mouth."

The talent of young François once established, he left the inhospitable house where he had been so misunderstood, and was taken into the family of an old musician, "Father Bambini," as Delsarte loved to call him.

Here, finding it in the order of facts, I must repeat almost literally a page from the little work quoted before.

Father Bambini was one of those old-fashioned masters, who treat their art with love and veneration. He gave concerts at which he was at once performer and audience, judge and client. Delsarte was sometimes present. He saw the good man take up a Gluck score as one handles a sacred book; he surprised him pressing it to his heart, or to his head, as if to win a blessing from the great soul which poured itself forth in these immortal compositions.

Here we most assuredly have the foundation of the unlimited admiration which our great artist felt for the author of "Alcestis" and of "Iphigenia." Everyone knows that it was Delsarte who drew Gluck from the oblivion in which he had languished since the beginning of the century. Delsarte alone could have revived him, his assured and majestic talent being amply capable of correctly interpreting those colossal works. Delsarte is the equivalent of Gluck, and, if we may say so, the incarnation of his thought. When the artist sang a part in those lyric tragedies of which Grétry says: "They are the very expression of truth," it seemed as if the illustrious chevalier lived again in him to win better comprehension than ever before and to be avenged at last for all the injustice and bad taste from which he had suffered.

Delsarte received no very regular musical education from Father Bambini. The lesson was often given while the teacher was shaving, which did not distract the attention of either party. The master, having no hand at liberty to hold a book, made his pupil explain all the exercises aloud, sing every composition, and read at sight the authors with whom he wished him to be familiar. Great progress can be made where there is such mutual good will. They had faith in each other: the child, because he saw that his master really loved his art; the old musician, because he realized that his scholar had a genuine vocation and would be a great artist.

One evening they were walking together in the Champs Elysées. Carriages rolled by filled with fashionable people. The humble pedestrians were surrounded by luxury. Suddenly Father Bambini turned toward his scholar:

"You see," said he, "all these people who have their carriages, their liveried lackeys and their fine clothes; well, the day will come when they will be only too glad to hear you, and they will envy you because you are so great a singer."

The child was deeply moved; not by this promise of future glory; not by the thought, that by fame he should gain wealth; but he seemed to see his dream realized in a remote future. That dream was the complete mastery of his art; it was his ideal attained, or closely approached. This mode of feeling already justified the prediction.

Delsarte retained a grateful memory of another teacher. M. Deshayes, he said, spurred him on to scientific discovery, as Bambini directed his attention and his taste to the works of the great masters.

One day, as the young man was studying a certain rôle, M. Deshayes, busily talking with some one else and not even glancing toward his pupil, exclaimed:

"Your gesture is incorrect!"

When they were alone Delsarte expressed his astonishment.

"You said my gesture was incorrect," he exclaimed, "and you could not see me."

"I knew it by your mode of singing."

This explanation set the young disciple's brain in a whirl. Were there, then, affinities, a necessary concordance between the gesture and the inflections of the voice? And, from this slight landmark, he set to work, searching, comparing, verifying the principle by the effects, and vice versa.

He gave himself with such vigor to the task that, from this hint, he succeeded little by little in establishing the basis of his system of æsthetics and its complete development.

After these beginnings, which Delsarte considered as a favorable initiation, Father Bambini--his faithful patron--thought that he required a more thorough musical education, and chose the Conservatory school. There, that broad and impulsive spirit in its independence ran counter to classic paths, to rigid processes; there, that exceptional nature, that potent personality, which was already a marked one, that vivid intuition--which already went beyond the limits of the traditional holy of holies--had little chance of appreciation. Moreover, Delsarte was timid; his genius had not yet acquired the audacity which dares. Competition followed competition; would he win a prize? In answer to this question which he had asked himself throughout the year, he saw mediocrity crowned; his soul of light and fire was forced to bow before will-o'-the-wisps, most of whom were soon extinguished in merited oblivion.

The artist's regret was the more acute because he did not yet know the course of human life. He had not proved the strange fatality--which seeks to make itself a law--that, in general, success falls to the lot of those who servilely follow in the ruts of routine. Happy are the worshippers of art and poetry, those who have devoted their lives to this sacred cult, if ambition and intrigue--with their attendant train of flattery, party rings, and illegal speculation--do not invade the stage whence the palms and the crowns are awarded!

Delsarte must also have learned in the course of his life, that genius, a rare exception, is more rarely still judged by its peers; and yet, the genius of this student was already revealed by various tokens; and for his consolation, these premonitory symptoms were noted by other than the official judges.

After one of these scholastic contests, Delsarte withdrew confused and heavy-hearted: he had received but one vote in the competition; and even that exception roused a sort of cheer, as if it were given to some contemptible competitor.

The defeated youth walked slowly away, dragging at his heels all the sorrow of his discomfiture, when two persons approached him; one was the famous Marie Malibran, the other the brilliant tenor, Adolph Nourrit.

"Courage!" said the prima donna, pressing his hand. "I enjoyed hearing you very much. You will be a great artist!"

"My friend," added Nourrit, "it was I who cast my vote for you: to my mind, you are an incomparable singer. When I have my children taught music, you shall certainly be their teacher."

Delsarte blessed the defeat which had brought him such precious compensations. These voices which sounded so sweetly in his ear, were soon extinguished by death; but they vibrated long in the heart which they had comforted. The artist associated their dear memory with every success which recalled to him their sympathetic accents and their clear-sighted prediction.

Chapter X.
Delsarte's Theatre and School.

When Delsarte had finished his studies, he entered the world unaided and alone; disarmed by the hostilities which could not fail to await him, by his very superiority, and by that honesty which refuses to lend itself to certain transactions.

At the Opera Comique, where he was engaged, he did not succeed. Exceptional talents require an exceptional public who can understand them and make them popular by applauding and explaining them.

And yet certain people, gifted with penetration, discovered under the artistic innovations peculiar to the beginner, that indescribable fascination which hovers round the heads of the predestined favorites of art.

Delsarte could not long confine himself to the stage, when everything connected with it was so far from sympathetic to him, and seemed so contrary to the true object of dramatic art. The theatre, to his mind, should be a school of morality; and what did he see? Authors--what would he say now-a-days?--absorbed in winning the applause of the masses, rather than in feeding them upon wholesome food or in preparing an antidote for vice and evil inclinations.

Whatever good intentions happened to be mingled with the play were lost in the details of the action--or in the often mischievous interpretation of the actors. With his wonderful perspicacity, Delsarte seemed to foresee all the excesses of naturalism in certain forerunners of Adolphe Belot and Emile Zola.

On the other hand, his comrades, who should have attracted him, showed themselves to be envious and malicious. To sum it all up, it was very hard for him to live with them. Some of them might please him by their simple gaiety, their childlike ease, their lack of affectation, and their amiability, but they were far from satisfying his lofty aspirations!

An occupation of a higher order, he thought, the elaboration of his method, demanded his thoughts. He seemed haunted by a desire to produce what his spirit had conceived. He longed fully to enjoy that happiness of creation that arises from useful discovery. He aspired to say: "In accomplishing the task which I set myself, I have also done much for art and artists."

Swayed by such thoughts, François Delsarte soon left the profession of actor to follow that of teacher of singing and elocution. Then he found himself in his element and, as it were, at the centre of all that attracted him. His teaching enabled him to verify the value of his axioms hourly, in the order of facts and to confirm the truth of his observations.

And yet he had not attained to the supreme beatitude. If the elect of plastic and practical art have to contend with appraisers of every degree, inventors have to deal with enemies who make up in stubborn resistance what they lack in numbers, and oppose the iron will of a rival who will not see the limit of the ne plus ultra which he believes himself to have reached and even exceeded.

In every station of life, the bearers of "good news" are a prey to the tyranny of interests and established prejudices. In our time, this persecution becomes mockery or indifference. Delsarte did not escape this debt of revelatory genius. Humble in regard to art and science, as he was conscious of his strength when face to face with rivals and competitors, he sometimes felt the doubt of himself, the sudden weakness, which overtakes great minds and great hearts in the accomplishment of their mission.

A special form of torture attacked our young innovator. He had proved, connected and classed a number of psychological facts relating to the theory of art, and he did not know the special terms which would make them intelligible. Like those phenomenal children, who see countless relations before they possess the words to express them, he had discovered a law, created a science, and he was still ignorant of the language of scientists. If he tried to demonstrate the bases of his system and its rational evolution in ordinary words, the ignorant would not understand him and the learned would not deign to listen.

Sometimes he did find some one who would hear him, question him, even criticize him, and who would go away bearing a fragment of conversation or some few notes which he had copied to turn to his own profit.

At this time, there came one day to Delsarte, a pupil who--by a rare exception--had been through a course of classical studies.

"Tell me, you who have studied (asked the teacher with the affability of a great man), what is metaphysics?"

"Why ... just what you teach us!" said the astonished youth.

Delsarte was enchanted to learn, that he was only divided by words from a science which had seemed to him to dwell on inaccessible heights. The study of technical words, when intuition had provided him with important ideas and new perceptions, was child's play to him; in a short time he could teach his philosophy of art in the consecrated expressions.

His lectures grew rapidly in the Rue Montholon. A choice public soon assembled to hear them, drawn thither by the admiring cry of the first enthusiasts. At this period, the talent of the artist was enhanced by the lustre of youth. Nature had endowed him generously. His figure, which later assumed rather large proportions, was tall and elegant; his gestures were marked by grace and nobleness; his hair, of a very light chestnut, gave his face a fair softness; his brown eyes relieved this expression and allowed him to give his face--when the interpretation of the part required it--the signs of power and vigorous passion. A full length portrait painted at this time and in the possession of Madame Delsarte, gives us some idea of his grand face and form, allowing for the disadvantages of every translation. Although, in singing, the organ was often impaired, his speaking-voice was most agreeable in tone, correct and persuasive in accent.

In acting various parts, Delsarte transformed himself to suit the character that he represented. He was congratulated on bringing to life for our age Achilles and Agamemnon, as Homer painted their types. Yet, I think he was sometimes told: "You paint that wretch of a Don Juan a little too faithfully." Certainly, art would never make that complaint!

If Delsarte was understood in that part of his method addressed especially to the ear and the eye, it was not so with the theory which prepared these striking demonstrations.

He was surrounded, it is true, by an assembly of men of letters, men of the world, and amateur artists, rather than by scientists and philosophers. Many in the audience and among the pupils did not pay an undivided attention to the scientific part of the instruction. Thus the first notes of the piano, announcing that the time for action had come, always caused a repressed murmur of satisfaction and pleasure.

Sometimes, after the lecture, a discussion followed, for Delsarte often left room for a controversy which was essentially incorrect and caused many misunderstandings. This was because the innovator sometimes blended with the clear hues of his art-principles certain tints of religious mysticism which had no necessary relation with the synthesis of his æsthetics.

It was one of the peculiarities of his character, amiable and benevolent as it was, to take delight in the conflict of ideas. If he saw, in the course of his lecture, a man whom he took for a philosopher or anything like it, he never failed to direct some piquant phrase, some aggressive sentence or some irritating thought that way--it was the gauntlet which he flung for the final combat.

Nor were women exempt from these humorous sallies.

Although the master loved all grandeur--the artistic sense with which he was so largely endowed inclining him that way--he had democratic, I might almost say plebeian, instincts. The poetry of simple, humble, small existences sometimes swayed him.

Thus, if among his hearers, a bright violet or an audacious scarlet gown annoyed his taste; if the reflection of a ruby or a diamond vexed his eye, he would choose that instant to improvise a rustic idyl or to intone a hymn to poverty.

But everything ended well; neither the philosopher whom he had provoked, nor the fine lady whom he had reproved, left him as an enemy. His nature with its varied riches had quite enough feminine coquetry to regain betimes the sympathy which he was on the eve of losing. A gracious word, an affectionate clasp of the hand, and all was pardoned.

The opposition manifested outside the lecture-room to his ideas and mode of instruction, was less courteous. There rival schools and jealousies, ill-disguised under an affectation of disdain, contended against him. He was accused of the maddest eccentricities; barbarous processes were imputed to him, such as squeezing the chest of singers, his pupils, between two boards--the reason was hard to understand. Others claimed that before Delsarte accepted a scholar, he required a profession of the Catholic faith and an examination in the catechism.

Those were the days when the author of "Les Orientales," in his legend of the "Two Archers," spoke of

"That holy hermit who moved stones
By the sign of the cross."

But if, as an artist, Delsarte loved legends and was inspired by faith, as a professor he could cut short this poetic part of his art, at the point where science and the practical side of his teaching began.

The reproach, therefore, carried no weight.

Delsarte was amused by these exaggerated accusations; in another order of criticisms, it was agreeable to him to hear "that he sang without a voice, as Ingres painted without colors." The comparison pleased him, although inexact.

Yes, I say inexact, Delsarte was not without a voice; he had one, on the contrary, of great strength and range; of moving tone; eminently sympathetic; but it was an invalid organ and subject to caprice. He was not always master of it, and this caused him real suffering.

Let me give you the history of his voice as Madame Delsarte herself lately told it to me. I must go back to his early days of study and débuts.

Delsarte entered the Conservatory at the age of fourteen. Too young to endure the fatigue of the regular school-exercises, his voice must have received an injury. When the singer offered his services at the Opera Comique---then Salle Vantadour--he was told that his voice was hollow, that it had no carrying power. This was perhaps partly the fault of the building, whose acoustic properties were afterward improved. However, thanks to the flexibility which his voice retained and his perfect vocalization, the pretended insufficiency was overlooked, and the young tenor was admitted.

His mode of singing pleased the skilled public, and the special abilities of this strong artistic organism--as I have already observed--did not pass unnoted.

A dilettante, to whom I mentioned Delsarte long after this time, said: "What you tell me does not surprise me, I heard him at his first appearance, and he has lingered in my memory as an artist of the greatest promise. He was more than a singer; he had that nameless quality, which is not taught in any school and which marks a personality; a tone of which nothing, before or since, has given me the least idea."

The tenor, from the Comic Opera, went to the Ambigu Theatre, and thence to the Variétés, where an attempt was being made to introduce lyric works. François Delsarte's dramatic career did not, however, last more than two years. During these various changes--I cannot give the exact dates--this artist, on his way to glory, was forced to gain a living by the least aristocratic of occupations. If he did not go so far as Shakespeare in humility of profession (the English poet was a butcher's boy), he strangely stooped from that native nobility--great capacity,--which must yet have claimed, in his secret soul, its imprescriptible rights.

If this was one more suffering, added to all the rest, it had its good side. It was, perhaps, the source of the artist's never failing kindness, of that gracious reception which he never hesitated to bestow on anyone--from the Princess de Chimay and many other titled lords and ladies, down to Mother Chorré, the neighboring milk-woman, whom he held, he said, "in great esteem and friendship."

I return to his teaching. His lectures were given in Rue Lamartine and Rue de la Pépinière. There was always--aside from the school--an audience made up of certain never failing followers and of a floating population. The birds of passage sometimes came with a very distinct intention to criticise; but if they did not readily understand the learned deductions, they went away fascinated by what the professor had shown them of his brilliant changes into every type of the repertory which he held up as a model. Enthusiasm soon triumphed over prejudice. Envy, alone, persisted in hostility.

These meetings were genuine artistic feasts. They were held at night, at the same hour as the theatres, and no play was preferable to them in the eyes of the truly initiated. They were a transcendent manifestation of all that is most elevated, which art can produce.

Here is an extract from a newspaper, which I find among the notes sent me:

"I heard him repeat, one evening, 'Iphigenia's Dream,' at the request of his audience. All were held trembling, breathless by that worn and yet sovereign voice. We were amazed to find ourselves yielding to such a spell; there was no splendor and no theatric illusion. Iphigenia was a teacher in a black frock coat; the orchestra was a piano striking, here and there, an unexpected modulation; this was all the illusion--and the hall was silent, every heart throbbed, tears flowed from every eye. And then, when the tale was told, cries of enthusiasm arose, as if Iphigenia, in person, had told us her terrors."

These lines are signed "Laurentius." I am very glad to come across them just as I am giving vent to my own feelings. I also find that Adolphe Guéroult, in his paper, the "Press," calls Delsarte the matchless artist, and recognizes a law in his æsthetic discoveries. I shall have occasion to set down, as opportunity offers, a string of testimonies no less flattering and no less sincere; but I hasten to produce these specimens, lest the suspicion of infatuation follow me.

How was it that amidst such warm plaudits, Delsarte failed to win that popularity which, after all, is the supreme sanction? It must be acknowledged that he took no great pains to gain the place which was his due. If he loved glory like the true artist that he was, "he never tired himself in its pursuit." Perhaps he had an instinctive feeling that it would come to him some day unsought.

He might, in this regard, be reproached for the tardiness of his successes; he himself made difficulties and obstacles which might be considered as the effects of extreme pride.

Halévy once suggested his singing at the Tuilleries before King Louis Philippe and his family.

"I only sing to my friends," replied the artist.

"That is strange," said the author of "The Jewess," "Lablache and Duprez go whenever they are asked."

"Delsarte does not."

"But consider! This is to be a party given by the Crown Prince to his father."

This last consideration touched the obstinate heart.

"Well! I will go," he said, "but it is only on three conditions: I must be the only singer; I am to have the chorus from the Opera to accompany me; and I am not to be paid."

"You will establish a dangerous precedent."

"Those are my irrevocable terms."

All were granted.

From his youth up Delsarte manifested this, perhaps excessive, contempt for money. On one occasion it was quite justifiable. Father Bambini had taken him to a party where he was to sing on very advantageous terms. The scholar was treated with deference; but the teacher who had neither a fine face nor the claims of youth to shield him against aristocratic prejudice, was received much as a servant would have been who had made a mistake in the door.

The young singer felt the blood mantle his brow, and his heart rebelled.

"Take your hat and let us go!" he said to his old master.

"But why?" replied the good man. He had heeded nothing but his pupil's success.

Delsarte dragged him away in spite of his protests, and lost by his abrupt departure the profits of the evening.

Chapter XI.
Delsarte's Family.

Delsarte married, in 1833, Miss Rosina Andrien. The young husband felt a high esteem for his father-in-law (primo basso cantante at the Opera); but we must not suppose that this consideration influenced his choice. He made a love marriage such as one makes at the age of twenty-two, with such a nature as his. Moreover, reason was never in closer accord with love.

Miss Andrien was remarkably beautiful. She was fifteen; her talent as a pianist had already won her a first prize at the Conservatory. She was just the companion, wise and devoted, to counterbalance the flights of imagination and the momentary transports inherent in the temperament of many artists.

I pause, fearing to wound a modesty which I know to be very sensitive: the living cannot bear praise with the indifference of the dead; but I must be allowed to insist upon the valuable assistance which the young wife lent her husband in his professional duties; this is a special part of my subject.

Mme. Delsarte started with a genuine talent. The situation in which she was placed, soon made her a perfect accompanist. Never was there more perfect harmony between singer and player. Amid the incessant interruptions necessary to a lesson, the piano never lagged a second either in stopping or in going on again. The note fell promptly, identical with the first note of the piece under study. To attain to this obedient precision, one must possess indomitable patience, must be willing to be utterly effaced. Delsarte appreciated this self-denial in proportion to the merit of her who practiced it.

In everything that concerned him, he relied especially upon the opinion of his accompanist; he felt her to be an abler and more serious judge than the most of those around him. But--with the shy reserve of merit unacknowledged even to itself,--the young woman shrank from expressing her impressions. If I may judge by the anecdote which follows, the artist was at times distressed by this.

One day Delsarte, granting one of those favors of which he was never lavish, consented to sing a composition of which he was particularly fond, to a few friends. It was the air from Méhul's "Joseph:" "Vainly doth Pharaoh ..."

Mme. Delsarte, always ready at the first call, took her seat at the piano.

The master was in the mood--that is, in full possession of all his powers. His pathos was heartrending.

"You won a great triumph," I said to him; "I saw tears in Mme. Delsarte's eyes."

"My wife's eyes," he cried as if struck by surprise, "are you quite sure?"

"Perfectly," I replied.

He seemed greatly pleased. Putting aside all other feeling, it was no slight triumph to move to such a point one who assisted at and sat through his daily lessons for hours at a time.

A few years sufficed to form a family around this very young couple. It was soon a charming accessory to see children fluttering about the house; slipping in among the scholars; showing a furtive head--dark or light--at one of the doors of the lecture-room. Let me recall their names: The eldest were Henri, Gustave, Adrien, Xavier, Marie; then came after a long interval, André and Madeleine.

Delsarte loved them madly; for their future he dreamed all the dreams of the Arabian Nights. Meantime, he played with them so happily that he seemed to take a personal delight in it.

He gave them all the joys of this life that were within his reach, and it was well that he did so! Alas! of the dreams of glory cherished for these beloved beings, some few were realized, but many faded promptly with the existence of those who called them forth.

But we must not anticipate. At the time of which I speak the children were growing and developing, each according to its nature, in full freedom. Those who felt a vocation seized on the wing--rather than they received from irregular lessons--some fragments of that great art which was taught in the school.

Marie learned while very young to reproduce with marvelous skill what were called the attitudes and the physiognomic changes. Madeleine delighted in making caricatures which showed great talent. The features of certain pupils and frequenters of the lectures were plainly recognizable in these sketches made by a childish hand.

Gustave was a child of an open face and broad shoulders. One incident will show his originality.

A strange lady came to the master's house one day either to ask a hearing or offer a pupil. She met this charming boy.

"M. Delsarte?" she asked.

"I am he, madam!" replied Gustave without flinching.

"Very good," said his questioner, laughing, "but I wish to speak to your father."

This same Gustave who, to a certain degree, followed in his father's footsteps, was struck down a few years after him, at the age of forty-two.

What a striking application of Victor Hugo's lines:

"And both are dead.... Oh Lord, all powerful is thy right hand!"

Gustave's career seemed to open readily and smoothly. Not that he could approach his father from a dramatic point of view; he had not his absolute synthesis of talents, and his figure was not suited to the theatre; as a singer, his voice was weak, but what a charm and what a style he had! Although his voice was not adapted to every part, although he had not that range of the vocal scale which permits one to attack any and every composition, still, its sympathetic, tender and penetrating quality did ample justice to all that is most exquisite in romance. When you had once heard that voice, guided by the force of his father's grand method, you never forgot its sincerity and melancholy; it haunted you and left you impatient to hear it again.

As a concert-singer and teacher, Gustave Delsarte might have won high rank. An ill-assorted marriage and his misanthropic character prevented. As a composer, he left some few songs, masses and religious fragments which are not without merit. When he was to produce any of his sacred works, the composer-singer never took a part; but he would lead the orchestra. If he came to a rehearsal and the performers appeared weak, a holy wrath would seize upon Gustave. Then he flung a firm, incisive, accentuated note into the midst of the choir, vivid as a spark bursting from a fire covered with ashes. He would accompany it with a glance which seemed to flash from his father's eye; at such moments, he resembled him; but this transformation never lasted more than a second; the fictitious power disappeared as all which was Gustave Delsarte was doomed to disappear.

At least, his father did not live to mourn his loss. And yet he knew that worst of heart-suffering: the loss of a beloved child. Alas! In that radiant family, whose mirth, fresh faces and luxuriant health seemed to defy death, the implacable foe had already twice swept his scythe.

The first to go was André, one of the latest born. He was at the age when the child leaves no lasting memories behind; but we know the grace of innocence, the privilege of impeccability by which infancy atones for the lack of acquirements. Then these little creatures have the mysterious entrancing smiles, which mothers understand and adore--and Delsarte loved his children with a mother's heart.

Time lessens such pangs; but when a fresh sorrow re-opened the era of calamity, it seems as if the sad events trod upon each other's heels and the interval between seems to have been but one unmitigated agony.

The loss undergone in 1863 was even greater. Xavier Delsarte was a tall, handsome young man. The master was content with the profit which his son had derived from his tuition. He was successful as a singer and elocutionist. He was attacked by cholera during an epidemic. The night before he had taken several glasses of iced orgeat in the open air.

Xavier lived in the Rue des Batailles with his family, but not in the same apartment. This fact was fatal. Instead of calling help in the first stages--unwilling to disturb his relatives--the invalid wandered down stairs during the night, and into the court-yard. There he drank water from the pump. I can still recall the unhappy father's story of that cruel moment.

"It was scarcely day. I was waked by that unexpected, fatal ringing of the bell, which, at such an hour, always bodes misfortune. The maid heard it also, and opened the door. She uttered a cry of alarm. Almost instantly, my poor boy stood at my chamber door. He leaned against the frame of the door, his strength not allowing him to advance. From the change in his features, I understood all--he was hopelessly lost!"

Delsarte was sensitive and of a very loving nature; but he was endowed with great strength. Much absorbed, moreover, in his profession, his studies, his innovations, he often found in them a counterpoise to these rude blows of fate. So when the thoughts of his friends recur to these disasters, they feel that their greatest sympathy and commiseration are due to the mother who three times underwent this supreme martyrdom.

Two names remain to be mentioned in this family where artistic callings seemed a matter of course. The concerts of Madame Thérèsa Wartel--sister of Madame Delsarte--brought together the élite of Parisian virtuosi, and the brilliant pianist took her part in the quatuors in which Sauzay, Allard, Franchomme and other celebrities of the period figured.

George Bizet--author of the opera of "Carmen"--prematurely snatched from the arts, was the nephew of François Delsarte. This young man taught himself Sanscrit unaided; he inspired the greatest hopes.

Wartel, who gave Christine Nilsson her musical education, was not of the same blood, but we find certain points in his method which recall the processes of Delsarte's school.

Chapter XII.
Delsarte's Religion.

I now confront an important and very interesting subject; but one which is more difficult to handle than the most prickly briers. There has been a confusion, in regard to Delsarte, of two very distinct things: his practical devotion and his philosophy of art, which does indeed assume a religious character. He himself helped on this confusion. I am desirous of doing my best to put an end to it. I hope that, truth and sincerity aiding, I shall not find the task too great for me.

I must first grapple with those ill-informed persons who have denied the master his high intellectual faculties, and even his scientific discoveries, for the sole reason of the mystical side of his beliefs. I must also expose the error of those who supposed that to this mysticism were attributable the miracles accomplished by Delsarte in his career as artist and scholar.

I was the better able to understand these two opposing elements--religiousness and strength of understanding--because, if I gave in my entire adhesion to the innovator in the arts, he did not find me equally docile in what concerned the theosophic part of his doctrine. Hence, discussions which illustrated the subject. I speak in presence of his memory as I did before him, with perfect frankness and simplicity of heart; taking care not to offend the objects of his veneration, but examining without regard to his memory, as without prejudice, the influence which his convictions exerted upon his intellectual conceptions, his ideas, his character, his talent--in a word, his life, in so far as it may concern a sketch which lays no claim to be a complete biography.

Now, it is from the point of view of art itself that I ask the following questions: Was Delsarte a devout Catholic? Was he orthodox?

Devout? He gloried in it, he insisted on it; I will not say that he affected minute daily acts of devotion, for that word would not accord with the spontaneity of his nature; but he accented his demonstrations, he spoke constantly of his religion. Without any intention to wrong the serious side of his religious feelings, it seemed to be a bravado put on for the incredulous, a toy which he converted into a weapon.

Orthodox? He made it his boast, and he certainly intended to be so; he loved, in many circumstances, to show his humility of heart. His faith, he used to say, "was the charcoal-burner's faith."

And yet, the charcoal-burner would have been strangely puzzled if he had had to sustain the ceaseless contests which the artist accepted or provoked from philosophers and free-thinkers; and, perhaps, no less frequently, from his fellow-religionists, and the priests themselves.

With the former, it was a mere question of dogmatic forms or of the necessity for some form of religion; with the latter, he entered upon a more peculiarly theological order of ideas, such as the attributes proper to each of the three divine persons, and other mystical subjects.

Here, as elsewhere, Delsarte brought to bear his personality, his stamp, his breadth of comprehension.

I once asked him what some called Dominations might represent, in the celestial classification? He replied: "If any one or anything forces itself upon our mind, takes active possession of our soul, do we not feel that we are under a certain domination?"

He gave me several other explanations touching the angelic hierarchy. I considered them very poetic, very ingenious--but were they also orthodox? I am not competent to judge.

It was impossible to say at the first glance, how the influence of this theosophy made itself felt in this sensitive character, full as it was of surprises. Delsarte was born good, generous, above the petty tendencies which deform and degrade the human type. On these diverse points, religious faith could scarcely show its effect; but he also declared himself to be irritable and violent--he confessed to a dangerous fickleness--still, he would readily have slandered himself in the interests of his faith.

Whatever the cause of this acquired serenity, Delsarte did not always refuse to satisfy his native impulses. I have already alluded to cases in which these returns to impetuous vivacity occurred, and how he rose above these relapses. Whether his peaceful spirit arose from religious feeling, or whether it was the result of moral strength, it breathed the spirit of the gospel; but it must also be confessed that our artist mingled with it much worldly grace. What matters it? Uncertainty has no inconveniences in such a matter.

It was particularly on the occasion of those sudden fits of passion to which the human conscience does not always attach due weight, that Delsarte laid great stress upon supernatural intervention.

Oh! what would he have done without that powerful aid, with his lively sensibilities--with his too loving heart?

I have no opinion to offer in regard to the shield which efficacious grace and the palladium of the faith may form for dangerous tendencies; for Catholics, that is a matter for the casuist or the confessor to decide; but, as far as Delsarte is concerned, had he beaten down Satan in a way to rouse the jealousy of St. Michael, had he made the heathen Socrates give precedence to him in patience, wisdom and firmness, I should regard that victory as the triumph of the sacred principles of the eternal morality, of that which sums up, in a single group, all the supreme precepts of all religions and all philosophies, rather than as a result of external practices.

It is by placing myself at this culminating point, that I have succeeded in explaining to my own satisfaction the true stimulus of the artist-thinker, in spite of all appearances and all contradictions; and everything leads me to believe that the elevation of his mind and the inspiration of the art which he taught and practiced, would have sufficed, in equal proportion with his faith, "to deliver him from evil."

How could a man glide into the lower walks of life, whose mission it was to set forth the types of moral beauty by opposing them, to use his phrase, "to the hideousnesses of vice?"

Now, talent and faith meet face to face. We are to consider to what extent the one was dependent upon the other; and whether, in reality, the artist whom so many voices proclaimed "incomparable" owed his vast superiority to acts of religious devotion, to his adhesion to the dogmas of the church.

It is not arbitrarily that a transcendent intellect pointed out a difference between religion and religions: every mind devoted to philosophy must needs reach this distinction.

I shall keep strictly within the limits of that which concerns art, in a question so vast and of such great importance.

Religion is that need which all generations of men have felt for establishing a relationship between man and the supreme power or powers whence man supposes he proceeded. To some it is an outburst of gratitude and homage; to others, an instinct of terror which makes them fall prostrate before an unknown being upon whom they feel themselves dependent, although they cannot know him, still less define him.

Religions are all which men have established in answer to those aspirations of the conscience, to satisfy that intuition which forces itself upon our mind so long as sophistry has not warped it. It follows from this, that religions vary, are changed, and may be falsified until the primitive meaning is lost. But whatever may be the faith and the rites of religions--whether fanaticism disfigure them or fetichism make a caricature of them, whether politicians use them as an ally, or the traces of the apostolate fade beneath the materialism of speculation,--there will always remain at the bottom, religion: that is, the thought which keeps such or such a society alive for a variable time, and which, in periods of transition, seeks refuge in human consciences awaiting a fresh social upward flight.

Well! it was not the external part of his belief which inspired Delsarte, when--to use the expression of the poet Reboul--"he showed himself like unto a god!" It was not the long rosary with its large beads which often dangled at his side, that gave him the secret of heart-tortures and soul-aspirations! The charcoal-burner's faith would never have taught him that captivating grace, that supreme elegance of gesture and attitude, which made him matchless. Nor did theology and dogma teach him the moving effects which made people declare that he performed miracles, and led several writers (Henry de Riancey, Hervet) to say: "That man is not an artist, he is art itself!" And Fiorentino, a critic usually severe and exacting, wrote: "This master's sentiment is so true, his style so lofty, his passion so profound, that there is nothing in art so beautiful or so perfect!"

Profound passion, lofty style, art itself, these are not learned from any catechism. That chosen organism bore within its own breast the fountains of beauty. An artist, he derived thence an inward illumination, and, as it were, a clear vision of the Ideal. If religion was blended with it, it was that which speaks directly to the heart of all beings endowed with poetry, to those who are capable of vowing their love to the worship of sublime things.

What I have just said will become more comprehensible if I apply to Delsarte those more especially Christian words: The spirit and the letter.

Yes, in him there was the spiritual man and the literal man; and if either compromised the other, it was not in the eyes of persons who attended, regularly enough to understand them, the lectures and lessons of the brilliant professor.

This I have already said, and I shall dwell upon this point, hoping to establish some harmony between those who taxed Delsarte with madness on account of his positivism in the matter of faith, and those who strove to connect with his devotional habits everything exceptional which that great figure realized in his passage through this world.

In fact, it is only by separating the Delsarte of the spirit from him of the letter, that we can form any true idea of him.

And the letter, once again--was it not art and poetry that made worship so dear to him? The shadowy light of the churches, the stern majesty of the vaulted roof, contrasting with the radiant circle of light within which reposed the sacred wafer,--all this pomp, of heathen origin, warmed for him the severe simplicity and cold austerity of Christian sentiment; the chants and prayers uttered in common also stimulated the fervid impulses of his heart.

The spirit of proselytism took possession of him later in life. It was controversy under a new form, more attractive and more distracting. There was always some soul within reach to be won to the faith; some rebellious spirit to bend to the yoke of the official church,--proceeding, under due observance of ostensible forms, from the letter! Neophytes were very ready to listen. After all, it pledged them to nothing, and they talked of other things often enough to prevent the conversation from becoming too much of a sermon. Then, certain favors--all of a spiritual nature--were attached to this situation: a place nearer the master during lectures, a more affectionate greeting, a sweeter smile.

These attempts more than once resulted in disappointment to Delsarte. I will not enumerate them all. Often he was heard with increasing interest, it seemed as if resistance must yield, and that he might speedily plant his flag "in the salutary waters of grace," but at that very moment his opponent would become more refractory and more stubborn than ever.

Once, he had great hopes. Several young people seemed decided to enter into the paths of virtue. The master was radiant. "Take heed," said skeptic prudence, "perhaps it is only a means of stimulating your zeal, of profiting better by your disinterestedness."

He soon acknowledged the truth of these predictions; he confessed it in his moments of candor.

One of these feigned converts, especially, scandalized him. The story deserves repetition:

The church of the Petits-Pères had ordered the wax figure of a freshly canonized saint, from Rome. Delsarte mentioned it to the school, and several pupils went to see it.

"Ah, sir!" cried young D. on his return, "now, indeed, I am a Catholic! How lovely she is, how fresh and fair after lying underground so long!"

"Unhappy fellow!" said the disappointed artist, "he takes the image for the reality, and the beauty of a waxen St. Philomena has converted him."

The young man had heard that the preservation of the flesh, after a hundred years' burial, counted for much in canonization, if it did not suffice to justify it; and as the place where they had deposited the sacred image was dark, D. had taken for life itself the pink and white complexion common to such figures before time has yellowed them.

Delsarte ended by being amused at his credulity; he laughed readily and was not fond of sulking. Nor must we forget that this preëminent tragedian was a perfect comedian, and that this fact entitled him to true enjoyment of the humorous side of life. Have I not somewhere read: "Beware of those who never laugh!"

Delsarte's piety--I speak of that of the letter--was seldom morose. It did not forbid juvenile caprices; it overlooked venial sins.

One Sunday he took his scholars to Nanterre, some to perform, others to hear, a mass of his own composition. A few friends joined the party. The mass over, they wandered into the country in groups. Some walked; some sat upon the grassy turf. The air was pleasant, the conversation animated; time passed quickly.

Suddenly the vesper bell was heard. Some one drew Delsarte's attention to it--not without a tiny grain of malice.

"Master, what a pity--you must leave us."

He made no answer.

When the second summons sounded, the same voice continued:

"There's no help for it; for us poor sinners, it's no matter! But you, master, you cannot miss the mass!"

He put his hand to his head and considered.

"Bah!" he cried boldly, "I'll send my children."

Let me give another trait in illustration of the nature which from time to time pierced through and rent the flimsy fabric of his opinions. This anecdote is a political one.

Despite the precedent of an ultra democratic grandfather, and all his plebeian tendencies as a philanthropist and a Christian, his Catholic friends had inclined him toward monarchical ideas--although he never actually sided with the militant portion of the party.

On one occasion, it happened that the two wings of this politico-religious fusion disagreed. As at Nanterre, Delsarte acted independently, and on this occasion politics were the victim. It fell out as follows:

A claimant of the throne of France, still young, finding himself in the Eternal City, had not, to all appearance, fulfilled his duties to the Vatican promptly.

The first time that Delsarte encountered certain of those zealous legitimists, who are said to be "more royalist than the king," he launched this apostrophe at their heads:

"I hear that your young man was in no haste to pay his respects to His Holiness."

Thus, always free--even when he seemed to have forged chains for himself--he obeyed his impulse without counting the cost. Never mind! This childish outburst must have gladdened the manes of the ancestor who connected the syllables in the patronymic name of Delsarte!

I hope I shall not forget, as my pen moves along, any of these memories, insignificant to many minds, no doubt, but serving to distinguish this figure from the vast mass of creation. If, among my readers, some may say "pass on," others will enjoy these trifles, and will thank me for writing them.

Thus, Delsarte was always pleased to think he bore the name of François in memory of Francis of Assisi--not the Spaniard whom we know, but the great saint of the twelfth century; he who "appeased quarrels, settled differences, taught slaves and common men,--the poor man who was good to the poor."

"The fish, the rabbits and the hares," the legend says, "placed themselves in this fortunate man's hands." * * * * The birds were silent or sang at his command. "Be silent," said the saint to the swallows, "'tis my turn to talk now." And again: "My brothers, the birds, you have great cause to praise your Creator, who covered you with such fine feathers and gave you wings to fly through the clear, broad fields of air."

One need not be very devout to be attracted by such graceful simplicity.

Delsarte went farther. Whether he accepted this magnetic attraction as true or whether he regarded it as purely symbolic--for this kind of miracle is not dependent on faith,--he considered the monk of Assisi as a lover of nature, whose heart was big enough to love everything that lives, to suffer with all that suffers. He strove to comprehend him by placing him upon a pinnacle, well aware that the sublime often lurks between the trifling.

It was on such occasions that the man of intellect revived to ennoble and illumine everything. If, despite his magnificent rendering of them, Delsarte never called legendary fictions in question, let us not refuse him that privilege. In such cases the poetry became his accomplice, and--"Every poet is the toy of the gods," as Béranger says, a simple song-writer, as Delsarte was a simple singer.

There was in him whom Kreutzer called "the apostle of the grand dramatic style," a desire, I will not say for realism, but for realization, for action. Thus he once had a fancy to join the semi-clerical society of the third order; it was a way of keeping himself in practice, since there were various prescriptions, observances and interdictions attached to the office. One must repeat certain prayers every day, and submit to a certain severity of costume. No precious metal, not even a thread of gold or silver must be seen about one. In the first moments of fervor, a beautiful green velvet cap, beautifully embroidered in gold--the loving gift of some pupil or admirer,--was interdicted, that is to say, was shut up in a closet or reduced to the condition of a mere piece of bric-à-brac. Luckily, the association did not require eternal vows, and I think I saw the pretty article restored to its proper use later on.

Another attempt--and this was his own creation--tempted this inquiring mind; he wished to pay especial homage, under some novel form, to the Holy Trinity. The adepts were to be called the Trinitarians. In the founder's mind, this starting-point was to be the seed for a sort of confraternity with the mark of true friendship and unity of faith.

This dream was never realized, apparently, for it seems that the association could never number more than three members at a time: so that it was in number only that it justified its title. Delsarte was very fond of these few adherents. "The Trinitarians--where are the Trinitarians?" was sometimes the cry at a lecture. It was the voice of the master who had reserved a seat of honor for each of them. This is all I ever knew about this society, and I have reason to think that it never got beyond a few talks among the members upon the subject which united them.

It is not without reluctance that I expose his weaknesses; but timid as the steps must ever be which are taken upon historic ground, we must walk in daylight. No one, moreover, could regard this effervescence of a sentiment noble in its source, as a want of intellectual liberty. It was the affectionate side of his nature which at moments dimmed his reason, but never went so far as to put out its light. I need not attempt to defend on this point one, of whom Auguste Luchet wrote:

"It is by his soul and his science that he lifts you, transports you, strikes you, shatters you with terror, anguish and love!"

And Pierre Zaccone says:

"He is an artist, apart, exceptional, perhaps unique! with what finished art, what talent, what GENIUS, he uses the resources of his voice!"

That which best atoned in Delsarte for the grain of fanaticism with which he was reproached, was the tolerance which prevailed in every controversy, in every dissension. If he sometimes blamed free thought, he never showed ill will to free-thinkers. In the spirit of the gospel--so different from the spirit of the devout party--he was "all things to all men." He was on a very friendly footing with a priest whom, by his logic and his sincerity, he had prevailed upon to forsake the ecclesiastical calling.

In our discussions, which dealt with secondary subjects of various forms of belief--for I never denied God, or the soul and its immortality, or the freedom of the will which is the honor of the human race, or the power of charity, provided it become social and fraternal, instead of merely alms-giving as it has been,--in these debates, sometimes rather lively, I would end by saying to him: "You know that I love and seek truth; very well! if God wished me to join the ranks in which you serve, he would certainly give me a sign; but so long as I do not receive His summons, what have I to do with it?"

I spoke his own language, and he yielded to my reasoning. "Come," he would say, "I prefer your frankness to the pretenses of feigned piety;" and he would add sorrowfully: "Alas! I often encounter them!" So we always ended by agreeing, and this truce lasted--until our next meeting.

The words which I have just quoted prove that if Delsarte clung to the Catholic dogmas, he was particularly touched by the sincere piety and active charity of simple, evangelic hearts. I may give yet another proof of this.

To satisfy his sympathies as much as to rescue his clan, when attacked, he would always quote a father confessor, one Father Pricette--this name should be remembered in the present age--who, during the icy nights of December, slept in an arm-chair, because he had given his last mattress to some one poorer than himself.

Chapter XIII.
Delsarte's Friends.

Friendly relations--although disputes often arose--were established toward 1840 between Delsarte and Raymond Brucker (known to literature as Michel Raymond). Fortunately in spite of the influence of the author of "Mensonge," Delsarte's superior rank always prevailed in this intimacy.

Michel Raymond published several novels in the first half of this century. Later on, he took his place in the ranks of that militia of Neo-Catholics, the fruit of the Restoration. (I do not know whether I am justified in giving the name of Neo-Catholic to Brucker; perhaps, on the contrary, his dreams were all of the primitive church. But, in spite of his Jewish crudities, I suppose he would never have joined the followers of Father Loyson.) His keen, sharp and caustic spirit did not forsake him when he changed his principles; and never did the Christ--whose symbol is a lamb without a stain--have a sterner or more warlike zealot.

In appearance, Brucker had somewhat the look of a Mephistopheles--a demon then very much in vogue,--especially when he laughed, his laughter being full of sardonic reserves. If Delsarte's mode of proselyting was almost always gentle, affectionate, adapted to the spirit he aspired to conquer, that of Raymond Brucker had an aggressive fashion; he became brutal and cynical when discussion waxed warm.

Once, in reply to one of his vehement attacks against the age, in which he used very unparliamentary expressions, he drew upon himself the following answer from a woman: "But, sir, I should think that in the ardor of your recent convictions, your first act of faith should have been to make an auto-da-fé of all the books signed Michel Raymond."

I repeat, this writer, although of undoubted intellectual merit, could not annul Delsarte's native tendencies; he could never have led Delsarte into any camp which the latter had not already decided to join; but when they met on common ground, he influenced, excited and sometimes threw a shadow over him.

When they had fought together against the nearest rebel, long and lively discussions would often arise between them, but they always agreed in the end: the artist's good-nature so willed it.

If dissension continued, if the fiery friend had given cause for reproach, Delsarte merely said: "Poor Brucker!" But how much that brief phrase could be made to mean in the mouth of a man who taught an actor to say, "I hate you!" by uttering the words, "I love you," and who could ring as many changes on one sentence as the thought, the feeling, the occasion, could possibly require.

Do not suppose, however, that Delsarte abused his power. Contrary to many actors who carry their theatrical habits into their private life, he aimed at the most perfect simplicity outside of the rôles which he interpreted. "I make myself as simple as possible," he would say, "to avoid all suspicion of posing." But still he could not entirely rid himself, in conversation, of those inflections which illuminate words and are the genuine manifestation of the inner meaning.

Be this as it may, the relation between our two converts assumed the proportions of friendship, doubtless in virtue of the mysterious law which makes contrast attractive.

Hegel says: "The identical and the non-identical are identical;" and this proposition passes for nonsense. Perhaps if he had said: "May become identical," it would be understood that he meant to speak, in general, of that reconciliation of contraries which united the calm genius of Delsarte and the bristling, prickly spirit of Raymond Brucker.

One motive particularly contributed to the union; Brucker was unfortunate in a worldly sense. Delsarte, improvident for the future and scorning money, still had, during the best years of his professorship, a relatively comfortable home. He loved to have his friend take advantage of it. Large rooms, well warmed in winter, a simple table, but one which lacked no essential article, were of no small importance to one whose scanty household had naught but sorrow and privation to offer.

How many evenings they spent together in dissertations which often ended in nothing--and how often the dawn surprised them before they were weary!

For Brucker it was a refuge, but for Delsarte, what a waste of time and strength taken from his real work! That wasted time might have sufficed to fix and produce certain special points in his method. Then, too, his health demanded greater care.

Take it for all in all, this intimacy was perhaps more harmful than helpful to Delsarte. Yet I have been told that Raymond Brucker urged the innovator to elaborate his discovery, and often reproached him with his negligence in pecuniary matters. It was he who said: "François Delsarte's system is an orthopedic machine to straighten crippled intellects."

I have also heard in favor of Raymond Brucker, that that mind so full of bitterness, that inquisitor in partibus, was most tender toward a child in his family, and that he bore his poverty bravely. I desire to note these eulogies side by side with the less favorable reflections which I considered it my duty to write down here. I recall a short anecdote which will serve to close the Brucker story.

As we have said, they were seldom parted. One day Delsarte had agreed to dine with the family of a pupil. As he was on his way thither, he met his inseparable friend. From that moment his only thought was to excuse himself from the dinner; but his hosts were reluctant to give up such a guest; they insisted"--they were offended.

"Pardon me," said Delsarte; "I really cannot stay! I had forgotten that Brucker was to dine with me."

"But that can be arranged! M. Brucker can join us. Suppose we send and ask him?"

"You need not," replied the master; "if you are willing, I will call him; he is waiting for me below at the corner."

They had acted as children do, when one says to the other on leaving school:

"Wait a minute for me, I'll ask mamma if you can come and dine with us."

Brucker, who after all knew how to be agreeable when he chose, took his place at the table, and all went well.

This proves yet once again the extent to which Delsarte possessed that charming simplicity so well suited to all distinction.

In the dissertations upon religious subjects incessantly renewed about Delsarte, it was sometimes declared that "great sinners were surer of salvation than the most perfect unbelievers in the world."

A young man, who doubtless felt himself to be in the first category, once said to the master:

"My friend, the good God has been too kind to me! I disobey him, I offend against his laws.... I repent, and he accepts my prayer! I relapse into sin--and he forgives me! Decidedly, the good God is a very poltroon!"

This seems to exceed the unrestrained ease and confidence usual toward an earthly father; but we must not forget that the inflection modifies the meaning of a phrase, and that poltroon may mean adorable.

This penitent, now famous, carried his provocation of the inexhaustible goodness very far. At one time in his life he tried to blow out his brains! By a mere chance--he probably said, by a miracle,--the wound was not mortal; but he always retained the accusing scar. I never knew whether this unpleasant adventure preceded or followed Mr. L.'s conversion, or whether it was coincident with one of the relapses of which that repentant sinner accused himself.

Another very religious friend was no less fragile in the observance of his firm vow. Becoming a widower, he swore eternal fidelity to the "departed angel." Soon after, he was seen with another wife on his arm!

"And your angel?" whispered a sceptic in his ear.

"Oh, my friend!" was the reply, "this one is an archangel."

Another figure haunted Delsarte and afforded yet another proof of his tolerance. The Italian, C----, shared neither his political ideas nor his religious beliefs; he was one of those refugees whom the defeats of the Carbonari have cast upon our soil, and whose necessities France--does our neighbor remember this?--for years supplied, as if they were her own children. However, she could offer them but a precarious living.

Signer C., to give some charm to his wretched existence, desired to add to his scanty budget a strong dose of hope and intellectual enjoyment: hope in--what came later--the independence and unity of Italy. By way of diversion, this stranger gratified himself by indulging in a whim; he had dreams of a panacea, a plant whose complex virtues should combat all the evils which fall to the lot of poor humanity; but this marvel must be sought in America. And how was he to get there, when he could barely scrape together the necessary five cents to ride in an omnibus! The Isabellas of our day do not build ships for every new Columbus who desires to endow the world with some wonderful treasure trove! And yet this man was not mad; he was one of those who prove how many insane ideas a brain may cherish, without being entitled to a cell in Bedlam or Charenton.

While awaiting the realization of his golden dreams, poor C. spent his time in perpetual adoration of the Talma of Music--for so Théophile Gautier styled Delsarte; he never missed a lecture; he took part in the talks which lengthened out the evening when the parlor was at last cleared of superfluous guests.

Among his many manias--how many people have this one in common with him!--the Italian cherished the idea that he was of exceptional ability, and that in more than one direction. He proclaimed that Delsarte went far beyond everything that he knew--equal to all that could be imagined or desired in regard to art--but as for himself, C., was he not from a land where art is hereditary, where it is breathed in at every pore, from birth? And more than the mass of his countrymen, did he not feel the volcanic heat of the sacred fire burning within him?

One evening, he made a bold venture. He had prepared a tirade written by some Italian poet. All that I remember of it is that it began with the words: "Trema--Trema!" [Tremble--Tremble!]

The impromptu tragedian recited several lines in a declamatory tone accompanied by gestures to match. Delsarte listened without a sign of praise or blame. Then he rose, struck an attitude appropriate to the text, but perfectly natural, and, in his quiet way, said:

"Might not you as well give it in this key?" Then, in a voice of repressed harshness, his gestures subdued but expressive of hatred, he repeated the two words: "Trema--Trema!"

The listeners shuddered. Delsarte had produced one of those effects which can never be forgotten. The smouldering ashes did not burn long; four syllables were enough to extinguish the flame.

Following, not the chronological order, but that of circumstances and incidents calculated to throw light on my subject, I must once more retrace the course of years.

C.'s persistency went on before and after 1848. During the second period, all minds were greatly agitated by the state of politics. C., in spite of his undoubted liberalism--he spent a great part of his leisure in making democratic constitutions--thought, like every other claimant, that he had duties to perform; and that he might as well, to facilitate his task, make an ally of the Emperor, without scruple; but access to royalty was no less impossible than landing on the American shore where his panacea grew. He hit upon the following plan:

A number of ladies were to go in a body and implore Napoleon III to pardon certain exiles: for the same calamities always follow civil war, and there are always women ready to beg for justice or mercy.

C., who knew their purpose, said to one of the petitioners: "How are you going to make the Emperor understand that I am the only man capable of saving the situation?"

The petition was not presented; and the world remains to be saved!

Our Italian had another specialty: he was perpetually in search of some notorious somnambulist. It is a well-known fact that the mental agitation caused by governmental crises is very favorable to these pythonesses of modern times. Each wishes to outrun the future and to afford himself at least an illusion of the triumph of his party. The oracles varied according to the opinion of the person who magnetized these ladies, and, often, according to the presumed desire of the audience.

Delsarte allowed himself to be drawn into these mysteries. He had time for everything. It afforded him relaxation, and a means of observation. On one occasion, he followed the refugee to a garden where a person of "perfect lucidity" prophesied. The sibyl was a believer as well as a seer and pretended to communicate with God in person. I do not know exactly what supernal secrets the woman revealed, while she slept, but the result was ridiculous.

They had forgotten to fix the hour for the next sitting: so, to repair the omission--by means of a few passes--the somnambulist was restored to sleep and lucidity. Then in a corner of the garden, in a familiar tone and--to use the popular expression--in which, as may well be imagined, the voice of Jehovah was not heard:

"My God, what day shall we return?"

"He says Wednesday," announced the lady.

"Thank you, God!"

If the Italian went into ecstasies over this irreverent trifling, Delsarte did not disdain to caricature it, and gave us a most comical little performance. Here again we see how he could transform everything, and make something out of nothing!

Among the frequenters of his lectures was an artist whom I would gladly mention for his talent if I did not fear to annoy him by connecting his name with an incident concerning him. I relate it in the hope of somewhat diverting my readers, to whom I must so often discourse of serious things.

Mr. P. painted a portrait of Delsarte as a young man. The features are exact, the pose firm and dignified, the eye proud. The painter and the model were on very good terms and sympathized in religious matters. It must have been the master who brought him over. He still burned with the zeal peculiar to recent converts; to such a point that even on a short excursion into the country, he could not await his return to Paris to approach the stool of repentance. This desire seemed easily satisfied; what village is without a father confessor!

So, one fine day, the artist rang at the first parsonage he could find. The priest's sister opened the door--offered him a seat--and told him that her brother was away. But, after these preliminaries, the lady seemed uneasy. She inquired what the stranger wanted.

"To speak with the priest."

What could this stranger have to say to him? Such was the question which floated in her eyes, amidst the confused phrases in which she strove to gain an explanation. Mr. P. finally told her that he had come to confess.

"My brother will not return till very late," said the poor girl, unable to disguise her distress.

"I will wait!" replied the traveler.

"Oh, sir, I hope you will not!"

He thought he heard her mutter: "We read such things in the papers!"

The visitor at last perceived that she took him for a thief, and he could not depart quickly enough.

One more anecdote:

François Delsarte called himself a bad citizen, because he disliked to undertake the duties entailed by reason of the national guard--a dignity long demanded by the advanced party of the day, but of which they soon wearied.

I think that the artist's infractions were often overlooked, and his reasons for exemption were never too closely scanned. And yet, the soldier-citizen was one day arraigned before a council of discipline, which, without regard for this representative of the highest personages of fiction, condemned him to three days' imprisonment.

It was as if they had imprisoned saltpetre in company with a bunch of matches--but he restrained his rebellious feelings; he would not give his judges the satisfaction of knowing his torment. He soon thought only of procuring consolation: he summoned his friends, who visited him in throngs. Then he made the acquaintance of his companions in misfortune. There was one especially, who, alone, would have made up to him for all the inconveniences of his forced arrest.

The first time that this prisoner entered the room where the other prisoners were assembled, he looked at them with the most solemn air, put his hand to his forehead, made a military salute, and in grave tones, as if beginning a harangue, he uttered these words:

"Captives--I salute you!"

It was strangely pertinent. Delsarte was not behindhand in comic gravity. This little scene enlivened him.

Another compensation fell to the lot of our captive. One of the prisoners sang him a song, one stanza of which lingered in his memory. I transcribe it:

"I was born in Finisterre,
At Quimperlay I saw the light.
The sweetest air is my native air,
My parish church is painted white!
Oh! so I sang, I sighed, I said,--
How I love my native air,
And parish church so bright!"

These lines, written by some Breton minstrel, inspired one of those sweet, plaintive airs which the drawling voice of the drovers sing as they return at nightfall; one of those airs which seem to follow the brook down the valleys, and which repeat the echoes of the mountains, in the far distance.

Oh! how Delsarte used to murmur it; it made one homesick for Brittany!

Chapter XIV.
Delsarte's Scholars.

To get one's bearings in that floating population (where persistency and fidelity are rare qualities) which haunts a singing-school, it is well to make classifications. In Delsarte's case, the novelty of his processes, his extraordinary reputation among the art-loving public, the length of time which he insisted was necessary for complete education, all combined to produce an incessant ebb and flow of pupils.

Therefore, I must distinguish.

First, there were those, brought by Delsarte's generosity, whose only resource was a vocation more or less favored by natural gifts. He would say: "Come one, come all." But, of course, many were called, and few were chosen, the majority only making a passing visit.

Then there were the finished artists. They took private lessons, coming to beg the master to put the finishing touch to their work, hoping to gain from him something of that spiritual flame which consecrates talent. I shall not undertake to speak of all, but I must quote a few names.

One winter day, says La Patrie for June 18, 1857, a woman, beautiful and still young, visited Delsarte, begging him to initiate her into the mysteries of Gluck's style:

"You are the greatest known singer," she said; "no one can enter into the work of the great masters and seize their most secret thought as you do; teach me!"

"Who are you?" asked François Delsarte.

"Henrietta Sontag," replied the stranger.

Madame Barbot had a moment of great triumph, and was summoned to Russia at the period of her success in Paris. She was perhaps the master's best imitator; she had somewhat of his tragic emotion, his style, his gesture; then what did she lack to equal him? She lacked that absolute sine qua non of art and poetry--personality. She added little of her own.

Even among those who could neither hear his lectures nor follow his lessons, Delsarte had disciples. A great singing-teacher, whom I knew at Florence, was eager to learn everything concerning the method. I often heard him ask a certain young girl, as he read a score: "You were Delsarte's pupil; tell me if he would have read this as I have done?"

Even the famous Jenny Lind made the journey from London to Paris, expressly to hear the great singer.

At his lectures were seen from time to time: M. and Mme. Amand Chevé, Mlle. Chaudesaigues, M. Mario Uchard--who, after his marriage, asked for elocution lessons for his wife (Madeleine Brohan),--Mlle. Rosalie Jacob, whose brilliant vocalization never won the renown which it deserved, Mme. Carvalho, who was not one of the regular attendants, but who trained her rare talent as a light singer, there, before the very eyes of her fellow pupils,--Géraldon, who was very successful in Italy, under the name of Géraldoni.

Then, there was Mme. de B----, who appeared at the opera under the name of Betty; a beauty with a fine voice. This artist did not perfect her talents, being in haste to join the theatre in Rue Lepelletier, under the shield of another master. Although well received by the public, she soon gave up the profession.

A memory haunts me, and I cannot deny it a few lines.

Mme. M. may have been eighteen when she began to study singing with Delsarte, together with her husband, who was destined for a similar career. She had an agreeable voice, but a particularly charming face, the freshness of a child in its cradle, a sweet expression of innocence. In figure she was tall and slender. The lovely creature always looked like a Bengal rose tossing upon its graceful stalk. These young students considered themselves finished and made an engagement with the manager of a theatre in Brazil.

"Don't do it," said Delsarte to the husband, knowing his suspicious nature, "that is a dangerous region; you will never bring your wife back alive."

He prophesied but too truthfully.

Soon after, we heard that the fair songstress had been shot dead by the hand of the husband who adored her. I like to think that she was innocent of more than imprudence. The story which reached us from that distant land was, that M. M. threatened to kill his wife if she continued to associate with a certain young man.

"You would never do it!" she said.

She did not reckon on the aberrations of jealousy. It was said, in excuse for the murderer, that she had defied him, saying:

"I love him, and I do not love you!"

After the catastrophe, the unfortunate husband gave himself up to justice. No case was found against him, but how he must have suffered when he had forever cut himself off from the sight of that enchanting creature!

Three figures stand preëminent in the crowd: Darcier, Giraudet, Madame Pasca.

I will proceed in order of seniority.

The first named did not attend the lectures when I did, but I often heard him mentioned in society where he attracted attention by his rendering of Delsarte's "Stanzas to Eternity," Pierre Dupont's "Hundred Louis d'or," and many other impressive or dramatic pieces. I know the master considered him possessed of much aptitude and feeling for art.

They met one evening at a large party given by a high official of the day. Darcier sang well, in Delsarte's opinion; but it was perhaps too well for a public made up of fashionables, not connoisseurs.

"It takes something more than talent to move them," thought the real judge, annoyed; and with that accent familiar to well-bred people, which transfigures a triviality, he said to the singer:

"Let them have the bread!"

He referred to a political song ending with these lines:

"Ye cannot hush the moan
Of the people when they cry: 'We hunger ...'
For it is the cry of nature,
They want bread, bread, bread!"

The guests were forced to give the attention which it demanded to this cry which aroused the idea of recent seditions, and the performer came in for his share.

This artist may still be heard, but his talents are displayed in so narrow a circle that his reputation is a limited one. Yet it is said that his compositions and his mode of singing them attest to great vigor.

Darcier, it seems, always retained a strong feeling of devotion for his master. He has been heard to say: "I fear but two things--Delsarte and thunder."

Alfred Giraudet joined the grand opera as primo basso cantante. He was warmly received by the press, and had already won a name at the Opéra Comique and at concerts. In this singer may be noted the firmness of accent and scholarly mode of phrasing, always in harmony with the prosody of the language, which are part of the tradition of the great school. He always bears himself well on the stage, and the sobriety of his gesture is a salutary example which some of his present colleagues would do well to imitate.

He, too, was a loyal soul; he always regarded it as an honor to bear the title of pupil of Delsarte, the latter always writing to him as my dear and last disciple. I owe many of the memories and documents used in this volume to his kindness.

Alfred Giraudet always took his audience captive when he sang Malherbe's verses--music by Réber--of which each strophe ends with the following lines:

"Leave these vanities, put them far behind us,
'Tis God who gives us life,
'Tis God whom we should love."

The broad, sustained style, so appropriate to the words of the melody, finds a sympathetic interpreter in the young artist.

Delsarte gave this with great maestria. The finale, particularly, always transports the listeners.

If any one can revive the tradition of the master's teachings, it is certainly Giraudet, who understands the method and appreciates its high import.

Madame Pasca was one of the latest comers; her advent was an event. There were pupils in the school who were destined for the theatre, and there were women of society; the future artist of the Gymnase partook of both phases. She had the advantages of a vocation and of a careful education; her fortune allowed her to dress elegantly, with the picturesqueness imparted by artistic taste.

Chance, or a presentiment of speedy success, led her to take her place, on the first day, very near the master, in a peculiar seat--a sort of small, low easy chair which inspired one with a sense of nonchalance. She was in full sight. Her gaze, profound and sombre at times, roamed over the room with the natural air of a meditative queen. She inspired all beholders with curiosity and interest. The feeling which she aroused in her fellow-pupils was less distinct. Her rare advantages caused a vague fear in those who hitherto had securely held the foremost rank; her beauty created a sense of rivalry, unconscious for the most part, and yet betrayed by countless signs.

There was a flutter of excitement throughout the school. This increased when the young woman confirmed, by her first efforts, all that her agreeable appearance and fascinating voice had promised. She declaimed a fragment from Gluck's "Armida" which other pupils sang; a word sufficed to change interest to sympathy.

That accent touched all hearts. What visible grief and what a sense of suppressed tears when in her grave, slow tones she uttered the phrase:

"You leave me, Rinaldo! Oh, mortal pain!"

The master soon obtained from this marvellous aptness, what is rarely acquired, even after long years of study: dramatic effects free from all hint of charlatanism. The distinguishing point between Madame Pasca and Madame Barbot is, that the latter, while observing all the rules of the method avoided servile imitation.

Delsarte was all the more delighted at his success, because he had revealed to his scholar her true calling. Madame Pasca came to him for singing-lessons, but her large, strongly-marked voice had little range. She was directed toward the art which she afterward practiced, and began her studies with tragedy. Some idea of what she did in this field may be formed from the effect which she produced in pathetic scenes, where the comedy allowed her serious voice to show its power and penetrating tone.

I need not speak of Madame Pasca's success at the Gymnase and abroad. It is known and undoubted. Still she lacks the consecration of the stage where Mars and Rachel shone. When this artist left the school to enter upon her career, Delsarte said to her:

"My dear child, you will spend your life in atoning for the crime of being my pupil."

He was right, for Madame Pasca has no place at the Français yet.

I can speak from hearsay merely, of the lessons in elocution and declamation intended for preachers--particularly for the fathers of the Oratory,--never having been present at them. I only know that Father Monsabre and other famous ecclesiastics took lessons from François Delsarte.

Chapter XV.
Delsarte's Musical Compositions.

Delsarte paid but little attention to musical composition; still his musical works prove that he would have succeeded here as elsewhere, had he devoted himself particularly to the task.

To say nothing of six fine vocal exercises and a number of songs which had their day, his "Stanzas to Eternity" were highly popular. A mass by him was performed in several churches; but his "Last Judgment," especially, ranks him among serious composers.

This setting of the Dies Irae is touching and severe; the melody is broad, sombre, threatening; the accompaniment reminds one of the dull rattling of the skeletons reassuming their original shape. One seems to hear the uneasy hum of voices roused from long sleep.

One incident showed the importance of this work. Various pieces of concerted music were being rehearsed one night at the church of St. Sulpice, for performance during the solemnity of "the work of St. Francis de Xavier." A close circle formed around the musicians; private conversation added a discordant note to the harmony; the church echoed back the footsteps of people walking to and fro.

The Dies Irae came! The music at first imitates the angel trumpets which, according to Christian belief, are to be heard when time shall end. The summons sounded four times.

This mournful chant of reawakening generations instantly silenced every voice and every step; all were motionless; and the solemn melody alone soared to the vaulted roof.

A touching story is told of this work. At a large and miscellaneous gathering, M. Donoso-Cortes, a well-known Spanish publicist, then ambassador to Paris, begged Delsarte to sing his Dies Irae. A space was cleared in the music-room.

The score of the symphony for voice and piano, made by Delsarte himself, retains all his intentions and effects, to which his striking voice added greatly.

Delsarte began:

"Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum sybilla."

The whole assembly were taken captive. M. Donoso-Cortes was particularly moved. His eyes filled with tears. He was not quite well that night.

A week later the newspapers invited the friends of the illustrious stranger to meet at St. Philippe-du-Roule, to witness his funeral rites. Delsarte was present; the church was so hung with black that the choristers were alarmed for the effect of their motets.

The artist recalled the request made him the previous week by the Spanish ambassador. He felt as if that same voice came from the bier and begged him for one more hymn to the dead. In spite of his emotion, he offered to sing the Dies Irae.

To obviate the lack of resonance, Delsarte sang--according to his theory in regard to the laws of acoustics,--without expenditure of sound, almost mezza voce.

No one was prepared. The listeners were all the more overcome by those tones in which the friend's regrets pervaded, with their sweet unction, the masterly diction of the singer.

When his oldest daughter grew up, Delsarte seemed to take a fancy to a different style of composition. He would not give that young soul the regular repertory of his pupils, all passion and profane love. He wrote for Marie words and music--couplets which were neither romance nor song; nor were they quite canticles, although religion always lay at the base of them.

I know none but Madame Sand who can be compared to Delsarte in variety of feeling and simplicity even unto grandeur. I have often observed a likeness and, as it were, a kinship between these great minds. And yet these two great souls, these two great spirits, never exchanged ideas. The artist never received the plaudits of the distinguished writer. Both regretted it.

Delsarte said: "I lack that sanction," and Madame Sand wrote, when he had ceased to live: "I knew Delsarte's worth; I often intended to go and hear him, and some circumstance, beyond my control, always prevented."

The world owes a debt to Delsarte for collecting under the title "Archives of Song," the lyric gems of the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries. And also the songs of the Middle Ages, the prose hymns and anthems of the church, arranged conformably to the harmonic type consecrated by the oldest traditions.

"All these works," he wrote in his announcement of the work, "faithfully copied, arranged for the piano and transposed for concert performance, will finally be arranged and classified in separate volumes, to suit various voices, ages, styles, schools, etc., thus affording subject matter for a complete course of vocal studies."

I do not think that death allowed Delsarte to complete this vast plan, but it was partly finished. In the collection, we find the scattered treasures of an eminently French muse: old songs picked up in the provinces, in which wit and naive sentimentality dispute for precedence. All this still exists, but who can sing as he did the song beginning: "I was but fifteen," or "Lisette, my love, shall I forever languish?" and so many others!

To explain the inexpressible charm which distinguished Delsarte from all other singers, a songstress once said: "His singing contrives to give us the soul of the note. The others are artists, but he is the artist."

Chapter XVI.
Delsarte's Evening Lectures.

In François Delsarte's school there were morning classes and evening classes. The former were more especially devoted to the theory, to lessons. Those of which I shall speak might be compared to lectures, to dramatic and musical meetings. A choice public was always present. Among them were:

The composers Réber and Gounod;

Doctor Dailly, Madame de Meyendorf--a great Russian lady, the friend of art;

The Princess de Chimay and the Princess Czartoriska, who glided modestly in and took the humblest place;

Madame Blanchecotte, whose charming verses were crowned by the Academy;

Countess d'Haussonville, a familiar name;

M. Joly de Bammeville, one of the exhibitors at the Exhibition of Retrospective Arts, in 1878;

Doriot, the sculptor; Madame de Lamartine, Madame Laure de Léoménil, a well-known painter; Madame de Blocqueville, daughter of Marshal Davout, and author of his biography; a throng of artists, men of letters and scientists; certain original figures of the period.

On one occasion we were joined by a man of some celebrity--the chiromancist Desbarolles. Delsarte had the courtesy to base his theory lesson upon the latter's system; he pointed out its points of relation with the sum total of the constitution of the human being. It was a lesson full of spirit and piquant allusions; one of those charming impromptus in which Delsarte never failed.

From time to time certain persons in clerical robes appeared in the audience; the austerity of their habit contrasting somewhat strangely with the attire of the elegant women, men of fashion and young actors in their apprenticeship around them; but matters always settled themselves. One evening one of these priests was in a neighboring room, the doors of which were open into the drawing-room. If the songs seemed too profane, he kept out of sight; but so soon as the word God was pronounced or a religious thought was mingled with a romance, or operatic aria, the servant of the altar appeared boldly, rejoiced at these brief harvests which allowed him to enjoy the whole picture.

To give a correct idea of one of these evenings, I will copy an account which I have just written under the heading of "Recent Memories."

By half-past eight, almost all the guests have assembled. A stir is heard in the next room. "He is coming ... it is he!" is whispered on every hand. The master enters, followed by his pupils. Almost at the same instant a young woman glides up to the piano. She is to accompany the singers; she enters furtively, timidly, as if she were not the mistress of the house. She is beautiful, but she does not wish this to be noticed; she has much talent, but she disguises it by her calm and severe style of playing, which does not prevent critical ears from noting her exactitude and precision, combined with that rare spirit of abnegation which is the accompanist's supreme virtue.

Delsarte takes his place by the piano; his attentive gaze traverses the assembly; he exchanges a smile, a friendly gesture with certain of the audience who are always much envied. At this moment he is grave, serious, and as it were, penetrated by his responsibility to an audience who hang devoutly on his lips.

The professor begins by developing some point in his system; he gives the law of pose or of gesture; the reasons for accent, rhythm or some other detail connected with the synthesis which he has evolved. He questions his scholars.

The first notes of the piano serve to mark the change to practical instruction. The pupils sing in turn. The master listens with the concentrated attention peculiar to him; the expression of his face explains the nature of the remarks he is about to make, even before he utters them. He points out mistakes, he illustrates them.

Little by little, however, his dramatic genius is aroused. Achilles seems to seize his weapons or Agamemnon his sceptre. The scholar is pushed aside, Delsarte takes his place.

Then the artist is seen to the utmost advantage. There, dressed in the vast, shapeless coat which drapes itself about him as he gesticulates, his neck free from the cravat which puts modern Europeans in the pillory, and allowing himself greater space than at his concerts--there, and there alone, is Delsarte wholly himself.

The piano strikes the opening notes of the prelude, and before the artist has uttered a word, he is transfigured. If he is singing serious opera, the oval of his face lengthens, the lines become more fixed, his cheeks shrink, his forehead is lighted up and his eye flashes with inspiration; the pallor of profound emotion pervades his features, the somewhat gross proportions of his figure are disguised by the firmness of his pose and the juvenile precision of his gesture.

The part of Robert the Devil is one of those in which Delsarte best developed the resources and suppleness of his genius. Robert is the son of a demon, but his mother was a saint. He loves with sincere love; but even this love is subject to the influence of the evil spirit; hence, these outbursts followed by such tender remorse, that heart which melts into tears after a fit of rage. Robert is jealous, less so than Othello possibly, but Robert's jealousy is stimulated by infernal powers and must differ in its manifestation. It was in these shades of distinction that Delsarte's greatness was apparent to every eye.

Then came those indescribable inflections--words which pierced your heart, cold as a sword-blade: "Come, come!" says Robert, striving to drag Isabella away, ... and that simple word was made frantic, breathless, by the accent accompanying it. No one who has not heard Delsarte utter the word rival can conceive of all the mysteries of hate and pain contained in the word.

In the trio from "William Tell," after the words, "has cut an old man's thread of life," Arnold feels that Gessler has had his father murdered. A first and vague suspicion dawned on the artist's face. Little by little, the impression became more marked, a clearer idea of this misfortune was shown by pantomime; his eye was troubled, it kindled, every feature questioned both William and Walter; the actor's hand, trembling and contracted, was stretched toward them and implored them to speak more clearly. He was horror-stricken at the news he was to hear, but uncertainty was intolerable; and when, after these touching preparations, Arnold himself tore away the last shred of doubt, when he uttered the cry: "My father!" there was not a heart--were it bathed in the waters of the Styx--which did not melt from the counter shock of such violent despair.

The effects of rage, hate, irony, the terrors of remorse, the bitterness of disappointment, were not the only dramatic means in the possession of that artist whom Madame Sontag proclaimed as "the greatest known singer." None could express as did Delsarte, contemplation, serenity, tenderness--the dreams of a sweet and simple soul, and even the divine silliness of innocent beings. Wit and malice were equally easy for him to render.

In the duet from "Count Ory:"

"Once more I'll see the beauty whom I love,"

he was quite as apt at interpreting the hypocritical good-nature of the false hermit as the sentimental playfulness of the love-lorn page.

In his school the comic style bore an impress of propriety and distinction, because it resulted from intellectual perceptions rather than it expressed the vulgar sensations manifested by exaggerated caricature and grimace.

Delsarte thus put his stamp upon every style which he attempted; he renovated every part. He restored Gluck to life; he revealed Spontini to himself. The latter--the illustrious author of "Fernando Cortez"--was at a musical entertainment where Delsarte, whom he had never known, sang. He had drunk deep of the composer's inspiration: he showed this in the very first phrase of the great air:

"Whither do ye hasten? Oh, traitorous race!"

He sang with such vigorous accent, such great maestria, that--in the mouth of Montezuma--the words must have sufficed to rally the Mexican army from its rout. He gave the cantabile:

"Oh country, oh spot so full of charm!"

with indescribable sadness; desolation and despair seemed to fill his soul, and when the conquered man invoked the spirits of his ancestors:

"Shall I say to the shadows of my fathers,
Arise--and leave your gloomy tomb!"

it seemed--so powerful was the adjuration--as if the audience must see the sepulchre open on the spot which the singer and actor indicated by his gesture and his gaze.

Such profound knowledge, sublime talent, terrifying effects and contrasts so skilfully managed, and yet so natural in their transition, strongly moved the composer.

"Do you know that you made me tremble?" Delsarte said to him after he had sang.

"Do you know that you made me weep?" replied Spontini, charmed to see his work raised to such proportions.

Delsarte was always master of himself, however impassioned he appeared.

Often, in his lessons, when every soul hung upon his accents, he would stop abruptly and restore the part to his pupil. Then, as if a magic wand had touched him, all the attributes of the personage who had lived in him, vanished. His face, his form, his bearing resumed their usual appearance. The artist disappeared, and the professor quietly resumed his place, without seeming to notice that the audience--still shaken by the emotions they had felt--blamed him for this too prompt metamorphosis.

Yet Delsarte was as agreeable a teacher as he was a marvelous artist. His instruction was enlivened by countless unexpected flashes; his sallies were as quick as gunpowder.

"I die!" languidly sang a tenor.

"You sleep!" said the master.

"Come, lady fair!" exclaimed another singer.

"If you call her in that voice, you may believe that she will never come!"

"Don't make a public-crier of your Achilles," said the master to some one with a rich organ, given over to its own uncultivated power.

All three smiled. The one tried to die more fitly; the other to call his lady fair in more seductive accents. The petulant outburst of the master taught them more than many a long dissertation.

Delsarte made great use of his power of imitating a defect; he even exaggerated it so that the scholar, seeing it reflected as in a magnifying-glass, more readily perceived his insufficiency or his exaggeration.

If this mode of procedure was somewhat trying to sensitive vanity, it was easy to see its advantages. The master's censure, moreover, was of that inoffensive and kindly character which is its own justification. It was a criticism governed by gaiety. Delsarte laughed at himself quite as readily as at the ridiculous performances which he caricatured, if opportunity offered. And if by chance any pupil less hardened to these assaults was intimidated or distressed, consolation was quick to follow.

I remember that a young girl gave rise to one of these striking imitations. Delsarte put such an irresistible comedy into it, that the audience was seized with an uncontrolable fit of mirth. The master's mimicry had far more to do with this than the poor girl's awkwardness. But she did not understand this. Her heart sank at this harsh merriment and tears rushed to her eyes.

"What is the matter," asked Delsarte; "why are you so disturbed? Among the persons whose laughter you hear, I do not think there is one who sings as well as you do! I exaggerated your mistake to make you aware of it; but you did your work in a way that was very satisfactory to all but your teacher."

Speaking of this irony tempered by mercy, I recollect that Delsarte, after a great success, was once complimented by the singer P., whose popularity far exceeded that of the "lyric Talma."

"And yet you have given me lessons," said Delsarte, emphasizing the word yet. Well! in such circumstances Delsarte showed neither the pride nor the malicious spirit which might be imputed to him; his mind seized a contrast which amused him, and his face interpreted it, but his voice remained soft and friendly; for, in spite of his biting wit and cutting phrases, his feelings were easily touched and his heart was truly rich in sympathy.

Delsarte sang a great deal during his lessons; and perhaps he gained, from the point of view of the voice, by confining himself to fragments; seizing the opportune moment, and his voice not having had time to be tired, he could give, for a relatively long space, the clear, ringing tones necessary for brilliant pieces. Then his vocalization--which has only a mechanical value with most singers--became sobs, satanic laughter, delirium, and terror.

Then, too, thanks to proximity, the most delicate tones could be heard to the extreme limits of the smorzando, still preserving that slightly veiled timbre unique in its charm, the mysterious interpreter of infinite sweetness and unspeakable tenderness.

One might perhaps have made a complete analysis of Delsarte from hearing him sing some dramatic song, but let him give Eleazar's air from "The Jewess:"

"Rachel, when the Lord,"

or that of Joseph:

"Paternal fields, Hebron, sweet vale,--"

let the artist give this in a quiet style, as putting a mute upon his voice, and the observer forgot his part; he followed the entrancing melody as far as it would lead him into the realms of the ineffable whence he returned with the fascination of memory and the sorrow of exile.

Let no one cry that this is hyperbole! One of the most remarkable accompanists in Paris, an attaché of the Opéra Comique, M. Bazile, was once so overcome by emotion in accompanying Delsarte that for some seconds the piano failed to do its duty.

I might recount numberless proofs of admiration equal to mine. One evening, at a lecture, the lesson turned upon a song from "William Tell:"

"Be motionless, and to the ground
Incline a suppliant knee."

For stage effect, Delsarte called in one of his children, about eight or nine years old.

The subject is well known: William has been condemned to strike from a distance, with the tip of his arrow, an apple placed on the head of his child.

William bids the child pray to God, and implores him not to stir. Reversing the action of all actors whom we usually see, the artist recited the fragment in a wholly concentric fashion; he did not declaim; he made no gesture toward the audience; but what emotion in his voice, and how his gaze hovered over and around the dear creature who was perhaps to be forever lost to him! He called the child to him, he pressed him to his heart; he laid his hands on that young head. His caresses had the lingering slowness of supreme and final things, the solemnity of a last benediction.

"This point of steel may terrify thine eyes!"

says the text, and the tragedian, enlarging the meaning of the words by inflection and accent, showed that this precious life hung on a thread and depended on the firmness of his hand.

At the last phrase:

"Jemmy, Jemmy, think of thy mother,
She who awaits us both at home!"

his voice became pathetic to such a degree that it was difficult to endure it. The child, who had restrained himself during the tirade, began to sob. All eyes were full of tears. One lady fainted.

At concerts his triumph was the same on a larger scale. I will give but one anecdote. A man of letters, who was also a skilled physician, said to Delsarte:

"Do you know, sir, that I made your acquaintance in a very strange way? I was at the Herz Hall, at your concert. Your voice and singing so agitated me that I was forced to leave the room, feeling oppressed and almost faint."

This impressionable listener referred to a day memorable in the annals of the master. Delsarte--he sang certain airs written for women in Gluck's operas--had selected Clytemnestra's song:

"A priest, encircled by a cruel throng,
Shall on my daughter lay his guilty hand."

Just as this maternal despair reached its paroxysm, the artist raised both hands to his head and remained in the most striking attitude possible to overwhelming grief. Loud applause burst from every part of the hall; there was a frenzy, a delirium of enthusiasm. At the same time, a violent storm burst outside; the roaring thunder, the rain beating in floods upon the windows, the flashing lightning which turned the gas-lights pale, formed a tremendous orchestra for Gluck's music, and a fantastic frame for the sublime actor. Then, as if crushed by his glory, he prolonged that marvelous effect, and stood a moment as if annihilated by the frantic and tumultuous shouts of the audience.

Chapter XVII.
Delsarte's Inventions.

Delsarte always had his father's propensity to devote himself to mechanics that he might apply his knowledge of them to new things. When he felt his artistic abilities, not growing less, but their plastic expression becoming more difficult, owing to the cruel warnings of his departing youth, this tendency toward occupations more especially intellectual, became more marked.

It may be helpful here to note that a machine--that positive and most material of all things--is the thing whose creation requires force of understanding in the highest degree.

The brain, that living machine, lends its aid to the intellect; it represents the physical side; it is the spot where the work is carried on. Feeling has no part in the intellectual acts which work together in mechanical production,--mathematics playing the principal part,--it has no other share, I say, but to inspire certain persons with a passionate taste for abstract studies, which leads them toward useful and glorious discoveries.

Thus, this thought of Delsarte and Pierre Leroux seems to be justified: that, in no case, can man break his essential triplicity.

Delsarte, moreover, by changing the direction of his faculties, or rather by displacing the dominant, affirmed his freedom of will. If he did not always class himself with the strong, he still loved to reign over himself in the omnipotence of his will.

The artist became an inventor; he took out letters-patent for various discoveries, among others for an instrument of precision applicable to astronomical observations. Competent persons have recognized the great value of this invention, conceived without previous study, and which remains hidden among the papers of some official.

Only one of his mechanical conceptions was ever really put to practical use, that of the Guide-accord; it gained him a gold medal at the Exhibition of 1855; Dublin awarded it the same praise.

Berlioz wrote of this invention, in his book entitled, "A Travers Chants:"

"M. Delsarte has made piano tuning easier by means of an instrument which he calls the phonopticon. Any one who will take the trouble to use it will find that it produces such absolute correctness, that the most practiced ear could not attain to similar perfection. This Guide-accord cannot fail to gain speedy popularity."

On reading these lines, one is tempted to say: Here is an open-hearted writer; one likes this outburst in regard to a man who was in some sense his brother-artist. But what are we to think of this critic, when we reflect that in this same book, where he exalts the inventor, he never seems to remember Delsarte the revealer of a law, the creator of a science, the distinguished teacher, the famous artist. "He has rendered all pianists a great service by inventing this instrument," says the author of "A Travers Chants," and that is all. And he calls him Monsieur Delsarte, as if he were some unknown musical instrument maker or dealer! Had the author of "William Tell" or "Aida" vexed him, he would have spoken of them as M. Rossini, M. Verdi!

And yet he knew all about the man whom he seemed anxious to extinguish, for it was he who, in a musical criticism, wrote, among other praises: "It is impossible to imagine superior execution;" and elsewhere: "He renders the thoughts of the great masters with such brilliancy and strength, that their masterpieces are made accessible to the most stubborn intellect and the most hardened sensibilities are roused by his tones."

What had happened to make the author of the "Pilgrims' March" so oblivious of his own admiration? I have heard that the two musicians quarreled as to the interpretation of a passage by Gluck, and that a correspondence much resembling a literary warfare, followed. Could this justify defection? Perhaps a desire to stifle this glory, thereby to lend more lustre to some meteor or star, had some share in this supposed motive.

At any rate, the affair is not to the honor of Berlioz. We should never deny, whatever may happen, the just judgment which we have uttered. Direct or indirect, the rivalries of artists are to be regretted for the sake of art itself, which lives on noble sentiments and high thoughts. Although we may laugh at the inconsequence of a critic who extinguishes with one hand that which the other hand brought to light, we cannot repress a deep feeling of sadness when we see upon what reputation too often depends, and when we ask ourselves how much we are to believe of the opinions of certain chroniclers.

The fact which I have just quoted is the more surprising, inasmuch as Berlioz often drew his inspiration from the method of, and from certain modes of expression peculiar to Delsarte.

Chapter XVIII.
Delsarte before the Philotechnic Association.^[8]

It was in 1865 that Delsarte was heard in public for the last time. The meeting took place at the Sorbonne where the lectures of the Philotechnic Society were then given.

I see him before me now with his strong personality, his captivating and persuasive speech, his mind with its incisive flashes; but a visible melancholy swayed him and was to follow him through the variety and contrasts of the subjects on his program.

And first, he takes pleasure in proclaiming to all the tale of his mistakes. Still young in heart and in mind, it seems as if in giving up hope on earth, he tolled the knell of all the enchantments that were passed and gone; that creative head fermenting with the ardor of discovery seems to doubt the future and bow beneath the burden of a sombre submission.

And yet he is surrounded by picked men who admire him, by women, young, beautiful, brilliant, eager to hear him, as of old; but he is not deceived by all this. A magic spell has vanished; sympathy is not denied him, but perhaps he feels it to be less tender, less affectionate than in the radiant days of his youth.

This explains how, in the course of that evening, a recrudescence of Christian feeling more than once tore him away from the undeniable assertions of science, not to drag him down to the puerilities of the letter, but to draw him up into the clouds of theology, whence hope of a future life, the consolation of farewell hours, smiled upon him.

But if Delsarte appeared depressed, he was not to be conquered. His restless spirit betrayed him to those whom his mystic fervor might have misled.

"Many persons," he said, "feel confident that they are to hear me recite or sing.

"Nothing of the sort, gentlemen; I shall not recite, and I shall not sing, because I desire less to show you what I can do, than to tell you what I know."

Soon a wonderful change passed over him. It seemed as if he had been covered with ashes for an instant, only to come forth in a more dazzling light. Hardly had his audience felt a slight sense of revolt at the words: "I shall not sing," than they found themselves in the presence of an orator not inferior to the greatest in the force of his images, and who, with all his serious and pathetic eloquence, never forgot the studied touches of the poet, or the dainty style of the artist.

But I will not delay my reader to listen to me! It is Delsarte himself who should be heard. I will give a few extracts:

"I count," he said, "on the novelty, the absolute novelty, of the things which I shall teach you: Art is the subject of this conversation.

"Art is divine in its principle, divine in its essence, divine in its action, divine in its aim.

"Ah! gentlemen, there are no pleasures at once more lasting, more noble and more sacred than those of Art.

"Let us glance around us: not a pleasure which is not followed by disappointment or satiety; not a joy which does not entail some trouble; not an affection which does not conceal some bitterness, some grief, and often some remorse!

"Everything is disappointing to man. Everything about him changes and passes away. Everything betrays him; even his senses, so closely allied to his being and to which he sacrifices everything, like faithless servants, betray him in their turn; and, to use an expression now but too familiar, they go on a strike, and from that strike, gentlemen, they never return.

---

"The constituent elements of the body sooner or later break into open rebellion, and tend to fly from each other as if filled with mutual horror.

"But under the ashes a youthful soul still lives, and one whose perpetual youth is torture; for that soul loves, in spite of the disappointments of its hard experience; it loves because it is young; it loves just because it is a soul and it is its natural condition to love.

"Such is the soul, gentlemen. Well! for this poor, solitary and desolate soul, there are still unutterable joys; joys not to be measured by all which this world can offer. These joys are the gift of Art. No one grows old in the realms of Art."

After a pungent criticism of the official teaching of art as hitherto practiced, Delsarte explained the chief elements of æsthetics. He said:

"Æsthetics, henceforth freed from all conjecture, will be truly established under the strict forms of a positive science."

But, as in the course of his lecture he had more than once touched the giddy regions of supernaturalism, this formula seemed a contradiction to certain minds, yet enthusiastic applause greeted the orator from all parts of the hall.

One paper, L'Union, said in this connection:

"M. Delsarte is a spontaneous soul, his mind is at once Christian and free, his only passion is the proselytism of the Beautiful, and this is the charm of his speech....I do not assert that everything in it should be of an absolute rigor of philosophy," etc.

The same paper says elsewhere:

"All these theories are new, original, ingenious, in a word, felicitous. Are they undeniably true? What I can affirm is that none doubt it who hear the master make various applications of them by examples. Delsarte is an irresistible enchanter."

The opposition of principles with which he is reproached, these doubts of the strength of his logic, will be greatly diminished if this point of view be taken: that Delsarte traced back an assured science, that he deduced from the faculties of man the hypothesis that these faculties are contained in essence and in the full power of their development, in an archetype which, to his mind, is no other than the Divine Trinity. Plato's ideal in æsthetics and in philosophy was similar although less precise.

There is a saying that Italians "have two souls." In Delsarte there were two distinct types, the theistic philosopher and the scientist.

Now, the philosopher could give himself up to the study of causes and their finality, that faculty being allotted to the mental activity; he could even, without giving the scientist cause for complaint, make, or admit, speculative theories regarding the end and aim of art, provided that the scientific part of the system was neither denied nor diminished thereby.

And is there not a certain kinship between science and hypothesis which admits of their walking abreast without conflicting?

Delsarte, as we have seen, rarely left his audience without winning the sympathy of every member of it. At the meeting of which I speak, he vastly amused his hearers by an anecdote. He doubtless wished to clear away the clouds caused by that part of his discourse which, by his own confession, had a good deal of the sermon about it.

I will repeat the tale, a little exaggerated perhaps, but still very piquant, which doubtless won his pardon for those parts of his speech which might have been for various reasons blamed, misunderstood or but half understood!

The story was of four professors who, having examined him, had each, in turn, he said, administered upon his [Delsarte's] cheeks smart slaps to the colleagues by whose advice he had profited in previous lessons.

The following lines were the subject of the lesson:

"Nor gold nor greatness make us blest;
Those two divinities to our prayers can grant
But goods uncertain and a pleasure insecure."

"The first teacher to whom I turned declared there was but one way to recite them properly, and this single method, you of course perceive, gentlemen, could be only his own.

"'Those lines,' said he, 'must be recited with breadth, with dignity, with nobleness. Listen!' Upon which my instructor began to declaim in his most sonorous, most magisterial tones. He raised his eyes to heaven, rounded his gestures and struck a heroic attitude.

"'Show yourself,' he resumed (after this demonstration), 'by the elevation of your manners, worthy of the lessons I have given you.'

"'Ah!' I exclaimed, 'at last I possess the noble manner of rendering these fine lines.'

"Next day, having practiced the noble manner to the utmost of my ability, I went to my second professor, fully persuaded that I should hear nothing but congratulations. Well!... I had hardly ended the second line, when a shrug of the shoulders accompanied by a terrible burst of laughter, very mortifying to my noble manner, closed my mouth abruptly.

"'What do you mean by that emphatic tone? What is all this bombastic sermon about? What manners are these? My friend, you are grotesque. Those lines should be repeated simply, naturally and with the utmost artlessness. Remember that it is the good La Fontaine who speaks! [accenting each syllable] the-good-La-Fon-taine--do you hear? There is but one way possible to render the lines faithfully. Listen to me.'

"Here the professor tapped his snuff-box,--compressed his lips, dropped the corners of his mouth in an ironical fashion, slightly contracting his eyes, lifting his eyebrows, moving his head five or six times from right to left, and began the lines in a firm and somewhat nasal tone.

"Ah!" I cried, amazed, 'there is no other way ... what wonderful artlessness, simplicity and truth to nature!'

"So I set to work upon a new basis, saying to myself: 'Now, at last, I have got the natural style which fits the spirit of this charming work. I am very curious to know the impression which I shall make to-morrow on my third teacher.'

"The moment came. I struck an attitude into which I introduced the elliptic expressions shown to me the day before, and with the confidence inspired in me by a sense of the naturalness with which I was pervaded, I began:

"'Nor gold nor great....'

"'Wretch!' cried my third professor. 'What do you mean by that senile manner, that tart voice! What a Cassandra-like tone! You disgrace those beautiful lines, miserable fellow!'

'"But, sir....'

"'But, but, but. I will drop you from the list of my pupils, if you dare to utter a remark! You can do very well when you wish! But every now and then you are subject to certain eccentric flights. You sometimes imitate X---- well enough to be mistaken for him; then you are detestable, for you change your nature, and I will not permit it. Besides, it is a vulgar type. Stay, you looked like him just then, and it was hideous.

"'Now, listen, and bear my lesson well in mind: there is but one proper way of reciting those lines, do you hear? There is but one way, and this is it.'

"Here, my professor took a pensive attitude: then, as if crushed by the weight of some melancholy memory, he cast slowly around him a look in which the bitterness of a deep disappointment was painted. He heaved a sigh, raised his eyes to heaven, still keeping his head bent, and began in a grave, muffled and sustained voice:

"'Nor gold nor greatness....'

"'See,' said my master, 'with what art I manage to create a pathetic situation out of those lines! That is what you should imitate!'

"'Ah! my dear master, you are right; that is the only reading worthy of that masterpiece. Heavens, how beautiful!' I said to myself; 'decidedly, my noble teacher and my natural teacher understood nothing about this work. What an effect I shall make to-morrow at my fourth professor's class!'

"Alas! a fresh disappointment awaited me at the hands of my fourth master. He was, perhaps, even more pitiless than the others to all the meanings that I strove to express.

"'Why, my poor boy,' said he, 'where the deuce did you hunt up such meanings?' What a sepulchral tone! What is the meaning of that cavernous voice? And why that mournful dumb show? Heaven forgive me! it is melodrama that you offer us! you have done no great thing. You have completely crippled poor La Fontaine.'

"'Alas! alas!' said I to myself, 'is my dramatic teacher as absurd as the other two?'"

After the three preceding imitations, just as the audience had reached the height of merriment, the story-teller stopped.

"I will excuse you, gentlemen, from the reasonings of my fourth professor, for I do not wish to prolong my discourse indefinitely."

If this retreat was an orator's artifice--which may well be,--it was a complete success.

There was a shout: "The fourth! the fourth!"

"Well, gentlemen, the fourth, like the other three, claimed that his was the only correct style: I made no distinction between verse and prose, thus following the false method recently established by the Théâtre-Français. To his mind the cadence of the verse and the euphonic charm should outweigh every other interest. The pauses which I made destroyed its measure. I had no idea of caesura, my gestures destroyed its harmony, etc., etc. His pedagogic manner had nothing in common with that of his brethren."

This episode was not a mere witticism on Delsarte's part; he intended it to prove his constant assertion--and with persistent right,--that previous to his discovery, art, destitute of law and of science, had had none but chance successes.

Delsarte closed this session by a summary of the law and the science which I have set forth in this book; but I must say it was at this moment especially that he seemed anxious that his religious convictions should profit by his artistic wealth; all outside the sphere of rational demonstration is treated from a lofty standpoint, it is true, and is freed from the commonplaceness of the letter, but we can recognize none but a poetic and literary merit in it.

It is to this latter period of his existence that many will doubtless try to fasten the synthesis of this great personality; but if any one wishes to gain an idea of François Delsarte, of his ability, the extent of his views, the power of his reason, the graces of his mind, his artistic perfection, it is in his law, in his science, in the memories which his lectures and his concerts left in the press of the time, that such an one must seek to understand him.

Chapter XIX.
Delsarte's Last Years.

Before concluding these essays, my homage to the innovating spirit, the matchless art, the sympathetic and generous nature of François Delsarte, I make a final appeal to my memory, and, first, I invoke afresh the testimony of others.

La Patrie, June 18, 1857, says in an enthusiastic and lengthy article:

"His deep knowledge, his incessant labors, his long and fatiguing studies, have not allowed his life to pass unnoted; but although great renown, attached in a short space to his name, has sufficed for the legitimate demands of his pride, it has done nothing, it must be owned, to provide for the wants which the negligences of genius do not always foresee."

Then, apropos of Gluck and other unappreciated composers of genius, the author of the article, Franck Marie, goes on:

"With the confidence to which I recently referred, Delsarte has undertaken the reform. Sure of the success which shall crown his bold undertaking, he began almost unaided, a movement which was no less than a revolution. Between two snatches from Romagnesi or Blangini, the majestic pages of Gluck appeared to the surprise of the auditor. The heroes of the great master took the place of Thyrcis and Colin, the songs of Pergolese and Handel, coming from the inspired mouth of the virtuoso, at once aroused unknown sensations. Lully and Rameau, rejuvenated in their turn, surprised by beauties hitherto unsuspected."

Earlier still (in the Presse for December 6, 1840) in an article signed Viscount Charles Delaunay are these lines:

"We are, to-night, to hear an admirable singer (Delsarte). He is said to be the Talma of music; he makes the most of Gluck's songs, as Talma made the most of Racine's verses. We must hasten, for his enthusiastic admirers would never pardon us if we arrived in the middle of the air from 'Alcestis;' and if all we hear be true, we could never be consoled ourselves, for having missed half of it."

March 14, 1860, we read in the L'Independance Beige:

"Among the many concerts announced there is one which is privileged to attract the notice of the dilettanti. We refer to that announced, almost naively, by the two lines: Concert by François Delsarte, Tuesday, April 4.--Nothing more! These two lines tell everything! Why give a program? Who is there in the enlightened world who would not be anxious to be present at a concert given by Delsarte? For, at his concert, he will sing--he who never sings anywhere, at any price. Observe what I say: never anywhere, at any price, and I do not exaggerate."

This assertion, which shows the indifference of Delsarte to the speculative side of art, is not without a certain analogy to the fact which follows. At one of his concerts he was to be aided by one of the great celebrities of the time; Rachel was to recite a scene from some play.

The actress failed to appear. Some few outcries were heard. Delsarte considered this a protest: "I beg those who are only here to hear Mademoiselle Rachel," said he, "to step to the box-office. The price of their tickets will be returned." Applause followed these words, and the artist sang in a way to leave no room for regret.

I quote the following lines from an article published by the "Journal des Villes et des Campagnes" in reference to a lecture given in the great amphitheatre of the Medical School, March 11, 1867:

"Should I say lecture? It was rather a chat--simple, and wholly free from academic forms. In somewhat odd, perhaps, but picturesque and original form, M. Delsarte told us healthy and strengthening truths:--'The misery of luxury devours us, but the truth makes no display; it is modestly bare.'.... 'Art may convince by deceit; then it blinds. When it carries conviction by contemplating truth, it enlightens. Art may persuade by evil; then it hardens. When it persuades by goodness, it perfects.' These are noble words. Orator, poet, metaphysician, artist, M. Delsarte offers new horizons to the soul."

The sources whence I draw are not exhausted, but I must pause.

Thus all have hailed him with applause! Save for some few interested critics, without distinction of opinions, political, religious or philosophical, all differences were silenced by this admirable harmony of the highest æsthetic faculties: the spirit of justice conquered party spirit.

But whatever may have been said--and whatever may still be said,--those who never heard Delsarte can never be made to comprehend him: in him, feeling, intellect, physical beauty and beauty of expression formed a magnificent assemblage of natural gifts and of acquired faculties. In this distinguished personality nature became art, to prove to us that outside her limits, as outside the limits of science, arbitrary agreement and the caprices of imagination can create nothing noble and great, persuasive and touching.

With this artist there was never anything to betray the artificiality of a situation; interpreted by him, the creation, the invention, became real. 'From his lips a cry never seemed a studied effect. It was the rending of a bosom. A tear seemed to come straight from the heart; his gesture was conscious of what it had to teach us; in all these applications "of the sign to the thing," there was never an error, never a mistake. It was truth adorned by beauty. In his singing, roulades became true bursts of laughter or true sobs.

Yes, all these things surpass description.

But what any and every mind may appreciate, is the lovable, loving and generous nature which invested these transcendant qualities with simplicity, with charm and with life. Delsarte had a wealth of sentiment which overflowed upon the humble and the outcast, as well as upon those favored by nature and by fortune. Without the riches which he knew not how to gain, disdainful as he was of petty and sinuous ways, he was benevolent in spite of his moderate means.

He gave, perhaps, oftener than he accepted payment for them, his time, his knowledge and his advice to all who needed them. He admitted to his classes pupils whose beautiful voices were their only wealth, and who could pay him only in hope.

We may say of François Delsarte, that so sympathetic a nature is rarely seen in this world of ours, where still prevail--tyrants to be destroyed--so much antagonism, jealousy and rivalry. If some few of the weaknesses natural to poor humanity may be laid to his charge, no one had a greater right to redemption than he.

He once distressed a fashionable woman by speaking severely to her of one of her friends. She was much troubled, but out of respect, dared not complain. Delsarte saw tears in her eyes. He instantly confessed his fault, and acknowledged, with the utmost frankness, that he spoke from hearsay, and very lightly. He added that this mistake should be a lesson to him, and that he would think twice before becoming the echo of evil report.

If, touching his science and his art, this master often made assertions which might seem conceited, aside from those convictions which, to his mind, had the character of orthodoxy, he used forms of speech of which judges without authority would never have dreamed. I have heard him say:

"I cannot be much of a connoisseur in regard to pianists, for I only like to hear Chopin."

He was always ready to praise the amateurs who came to him for a hearing, even if they were the pupils of other masters, finding out among all their faults, the little acquirements or talent which he could from their performance; sure, it is true, to correct them if he afterward became their instructor.

Honors and fortune seemed within his grasp when he neared his end. America offered him immense advantages, with a yearly salary of $20,000, to found a conservatory in one of her cities. A street in Solesmes was named for him. The King of Hanover sent him, as an artist, the Guelph Cross, and, as a friend, a photograph of himself and family; it was to this prince, the patron of art, that Delsarte wrote regarding his "Episodes of a Revelator:"

"I am at this moment meditating a book singular for more than one reason, which will be no less novel in form than in idea.... I know not what fate is in store for this work, or if I shall succeed in seeing it in print during my lifetime."

He did not realize this dream.

It was at about this same time that Jenny Lind took a long journey to hear him and to consult him about her art.

At the period of the war of 1870-1871, Delsarte took refuge at Solesmes, his native place. He left Paris, with his family, Sept. 10, 1870. Already ill, he lived there sad, and crushed by the misfortunes of his country. Nevertheless, during this stay, he developed various points in his method, and there his two daughters wrote at his dictation the manuscript, "Episodes of a Revelator;" his intellect had lost none of its vigor, but his nature was shadowed.

François Delsarte returned to Paris March 10, 1871, after his voluntary exile. He soon yielded to a painful disease, doubtless regretting that he had not finished his work, but courageous and submissive.

As far as it lay in my power, my task is done. I have furnished documents for the history of the arts; I have aroused and tried to fix attention upon that luminous point which was threatened with oblivion.

Now I call for the aid of all, that the work of memory may be accomplished.

There are still among us many admirers of François Delsarte, many hearts that loved him; a sort of silent freemasonry has been established between them; when they meet in society, at the theatre, at concerts, they recognize each other by mutual signs of regret or disappointment. His name is pronounced, a few words are interchanged.

"Oh! those were happy days. Will his like ever be seen again?"

To these I say: Let us unite to assure him his place in the annals which assert the glories of the artist and the man of science! Why should we not combine soon to raise a statue on the modest grave where he lies? Why should we not do for the innovator in the arts what the country daily does for mechanical inventors and soldiers?

Part Fifth.
The Literary Remains of François Delsarte.