I was the better able to understand these two opposing elements—­religiousness and strength of understanding—­because, if I gave in my entire adhesion to the innovator in the arts, he did not find me equally docile in what concerned the theosophic part of his doctrine.  Hence, discussions which illustrated the subject.  I speak in presence of his memory as I did before him, with perfect frankness and simplicity of heart; taking care not to offend the objects of his veneration, but examining without regard to his memory, as without prejudice, the influence which his convictions exerted upon his intellectual conceptions, his ideas, his character, his talent—­in a word, his life, in so far as it may concern a sketch which lays no claim to be a complete biography.

Now, it is from the point of view of art itself that I ask the following questions:  Was Delsarte a devout Catholic?  Was he orthodox?

Devout?  He gloried in it, he insisted on it; I will not say that he affected minute daily acts of devotion, for that word would not accord with the spontaneity of his nature; but he accented his demonstrations, he spoke constantly of his religion.  Without any intention to wrong the serious side of his religious feelings, it seemed to be a bravado put on for the incredulous, a toy which he converted into a weapon.

Orthodox?  He made it his boast, and he certainly intended to be so; he loved, in many circumstances, to show his humility of heart.  His faith, he used to say, “was the charcoal-burner’s faith.”

And yet, the charcoal-burner would have been strangely puzzled if he had had to sustain the ceaseless contests which the artist accepted or provoked from philosophers and free-thinkers; and, perhaps, no less frequently, from his fellow-religionists, and the priests themselves.

With the former, it was a mere question of dogmatic forms or of the necessity for some form of religion; with the latter, he entered upon a more peculiarly theological order of ideas, such as the attributes proper to each of the three divine persons, and other mystical subjects.

Here, as elsewhere, Delsarte brought to bear his personality, his stamp, his breadth of comprehension.

I once asked him what some called Dominations might represent, in the celestial classification?  He replied:  “If any one or anything forces itself upon our mind, takes active possession of our soul, do we not feel that we are under a certain domination?”

He gave me several other explanations touching the angelic hierarchy.  I considered them very poetic, very ingenious—­but were they also orthodox?  I am not competent to judge.

It was impossible to say at the first glance, how the influence of this theosophy made itself felt in this sensitive character, full as it was of surprises.  Delsarte was born good, generous, above the petty tendencies which deform and degrade the human type.  On these diverse points, religious faith could scarcely show its effect; but he also declared himself to be irritable and violent—­he confessed to a dangerous fickleness—­still, he would readily have slandered himself in the interests of his faith.