“My brother will not return till very late,” said the poor girl, unable to disguise her distress.

“I will wait!” replied the traveler.

“Oh, sir, I hope you will not!”

He thought he heard her mutter:  “We read such things in the papers!”

The visitor at last perceived that she took him for a thief, and he could not depart quickly enough.

One more anecdote: 

Francois Delsarte called himself a bad citizen, because he disliked to undertake the duties entailed by reason of the national guard—­a dignity long demanded by the advanced party of the day, but of which they soon wearied.

I think that the artist’s infractions were often overlooked, and his reasons for exemption were never too closely scanned.  And yet, the soldier-citizen was one day arraigned before a council of discipline, which, without regard for this representative of the highest personages of fiction, condemned him to three days’ imprisonment.

It was as if they had imprisoned saltpetre in company with a bunch of matches—­but he restrained his rebellious feelings; he would not give his judges the satisfaction of knowing his torment.  He soon thought only of procuring consolation:  he summoned his friends, who visited him in throngs.  Then he made the acquaintance of his companions in misfortune.  There was one especially, who, alone, would have made up to him for all the inconveniences of his forced arrest.

The first time that this prisoner entered the room where the other prisoners were assembled, he looked at them with the most solemn air, put his hand to his forehead, made a military salute, and in grave tones, as if beginning a harangue, he uttered these words: 

“Captives—­I salute you!”

It was strangely pertinent.  Delsarte was not behindhand in comic gravity.  This little scene enlivened him.

Another compensation fell to the lot of our captive.  One of the prisoners sang him a song, one stanza of which lingered in his memory.  I transcribe it: 

    “I was born in Finisterre,
    At Quimperlay I saw the light. 
    The sweetest air is my native air,
    My parish church is painted white! 
    Oh! so I sang, I sighed, I said,—­
    How I love my native air,
    And parish church so bright!”

These lines, written by some Breton minstrel, inspired one of those sweet, plaintive airs which the drawling voice of the drovers sing as they return at nightfall; one of those airs which seem to follow the brook down the valleys, and which repeat the echoes of the mountains, in the far distance.

Oh! how Delsarte used to murmur it; it made one homesick for Brittany!

Chapter XIV.

Delsarte’s Scholars.

To get one’s bearings in that floating population (where persistency and fidelity are rare qualities) which haunts a singing-school, it is well to make classifications.  In Delsarte’s case, the novelty of his processes, his extraordinary reputation among the art-loving public, the length of time which he insisted was necessary for complete education, all combined to produce an incessant ebb and flow of pupils.