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 Reber!

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.

Francois 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.”