thetic 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, Francois 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