He was surrounded, it is true, by an assembly of men of letters, men of the world, and amateur artists, rather than by scientists and philosophers.  Many in the audience and among the pupils did not pay an undivided attention to the scientific part of the instruction.  Thus the first notes of the piano, announcing that the time for action had come, always caused a repressed murmur of satisfaction and pleasure.

Sometimes, after the lecture, a discussion followed, for Delsarte often left room for a controversy which was essentially incorrect and caused many misunderstandings.  This was because the innovator sometimes blended with the clear hues of his art-principles certain tints of religious mysticism which had no necessary relation with the synthesis of his aesthetics.

It was one of the peculiarities of his character, amiable and benevolent as it was, to take delight in the conflict of ideas.  If he saw, in the course of his lecture, a man whom he took for a philosopher or anything like it, he never failed to direct some piquant phrase, some aggressive sentence or some irritating thought that way—­it was the gauntlet which he flung for the final combat.

Nor were women exempt from these humorous sallies.

Although the master loved all grandeur—­the artistic sense with which he was so largely endowed inclining him that way—­he had democratic, I might almost say plebeian, instincts.  The poetry of simple, humble, small existences sometimes swayed him.

Thus, if among his hearers, a bright violet or an audacious scarlet gown annoyed his taste; if the reflection of a ruby or a diamond vexed his eye, he would choose that instant to improvise a rustic idyl or to intone a hymn to poverty.

But everything ended well; neither the philosopher whom he had provoked, nor the fine lady whom he had reproved, left him as an enemy.  His nature with its varied riches had quite enough feminine coquetry to regain betimes the sympathy which he was on the eve of losing.  A gracious word, an affectionate clasp of the hand, and all was pardoned.

The opposition manifested outside the lecture-room to his ideas and mode of instruction, was less courteous.  There rival schools and jealousies, ill-disguised under an affectation of disdain, contended against him.  He was accused of the maddest eccentricities; barbarous processes were imputed to him, such as squeezing the chest of singers, his pupils, between two boards—­the reason was hard to understand.  Others claimed that before Delsarte accepted a scholar, he required a profession of the Catholic faith and an examination in the catechism.

Those were the days when the author of “Les Orientales,” in his legend of the “Two Archers,” spoke of

    “That holy hermit who moved stones
    By the sign of the cross.”

But if, as an artist, Delsarte loved legends and was inspired by faith, as a professor he could cut short this poetic part of his art, at the point where science and the practical side of his teaching began.