“Whither do ye hasten?  Oh, traitorous race!”

He sang with such vigorous accent, such great maestria, that—­in the mouth of Montezuma—­the words must have sufficed to rally the Mexican army from its rout.  He gave the cantabile: 

    “Oh country, oh spot so full of charm!”

with indescribable sadness; desolation and despair seemed to fill his soul, and when the conquered man invoked the spirits of his ancestors: 

    “Shall I say to the shadows of my fathers,
    Arise—­and leave your gloomy tomb!”

it seemed—­so powerful was the adjuration—­as if the audience must see the sepulchre open on the spot which the singer and actor indicated by his gesture and his gaze.

Such profound knowledge, sublime talent, terrifying effects and contrasts so skilfully managed, and yet so natural in their transition, strongly moved the composer.

“Do you know that you made me tremble?” Delsarte said to him after he had sang.

“Do you know that you made me weep?” replied Spontini, charmed to see his work raised to such proportions.

Delsarte was always master of himself, however impassioned he appeared.

Often, in his lessons, when every soul hung upon his accents, he would stop abruptly and restore the part to his pupil.  Then, as if a magic wand had touched him, all the attributes of the personage who had lived in him, vanished.  His face, his form, his bearing resumed their usual appearance.  The artist disappeared, and the professor quietly resumed his place, without seeming to notice that the audience—­still shaken by the emotions they had felt—­blamed him for this too prompt metamorphosis.

Yet Delsarte was as agreeable a teacher as he was a marvelous artist.  His instruction was enlivened by countless unexpected flashes; his sallies were as quick as gunpowder.

“I die!” languidly sang a tenor.

“You sleep!” said the master.

“Come, lady fair!” exclaimed another singer.

“If you call her in that voice, you may believe that she will never come!”

“Don’t make a public-crier of your Achilles,” said the master to some one with a rich organ, given over to its own uncultivated power.

All three smiled.  The one tried to die more fitly; the other to call his lady fair in more seductive accents.  The petulant outburst of the master taught them more than many a long dissertation.

Delsarte made great use of his power of imitating a defect; he even exaggerated it so that the scholar, seeing it reflected as in a magnifying-glass, more readily perceived his insufficiency or his exaggeration.

If this mode of procedure was somewhat trying to sensitive vanity, it was easy to see its advantages.  The master’s censure, moreover, was of that inoffensive and kindly character which is its own justification.  It was a criticism governed by gaiety.  Delsarte laughed at himself quite as readily as at the ridiculous performances which he caricatured, if opportunity offered.  And if by chance any pupil less hardened to these assaults was intimidated or distressed, consolation was quick to follow.