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!