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