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 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.