“Be motionless, and to the ground
    Incline a suppliant knee.”

For stage effect, Delsarte called in one of his children, about eight or nine years old.

The subject is well known:  William has been condemned to strike from a distance, with the tip of his arrow, an apple placed on the head of his child.

William bids the child pray to God, and implores him not to stir.  Reversing the action of all actors whom we usually see, the artist recited the fragment in a wholly concentric fashion; he did not declaim; he made no gesture toward the audience; but what emotion in his voice, and how his gaze hovered over and around the dear creature who was perhaps to be forever lost to him!  He called the child to him, he pressed him to his heart; he laid his hands on that young head.  His caresses had the lingering slowness of supreme and final things, the solemnity of a last benediction.

    “This point of steel may terrify thine eyes!”

says the text, and the tragedian, enlarging the meaning of the words by inflection and accent, showed that this precious life hung on a thread and depended on the firmness of his hand.

At the last phrase: 

    “Jemmy, Jemmy, think of thy mother,
    She who awaits us both at home!”

his voice became pathetic to such a degree that it was difficult to endure it.  The child, who had restrained himself during the tirade, began to sob.  All eyes were full of tears.  One lady fainted.

At concerts his triumph was the same on a larger scale.  I will give but one anecdote.  A man of letters, who was also a skilled physician, said to Delsarte: 

“Do you know, sir, that I made your acquaintance in a very strange way?  I was at the Herz Hall, at your concert.  Your voice and singing so agitated me that I was forced to leave the room, feeling oppressed and almost faint.”

This impressionable listener referred to a day memorable in the annals of the master.  Delsarte—­he sang certain airs written for women in Gluck’s operas—­had selected Clytemnestra’s song: 

    “A priest, encircled by a cruel throng,
    Shall on my daughter lay his guilty hand.”

Just as this maternal despair reached its paroxysm, the artist raised both hands to his head and remained in the most striking attitude possible to overwhelming grief.  Loud applause burst from every part of the hall; there was a frenzy, a delirium of enthusiasm.  At the same time, a violent storm burst outside; the roaring thunder, the rain beating in floods upon the windows, the flashing lightning which turned the gas-lights pale, formed a tremendous orchestra for Gluck’s music, and a fantastic frame for the sublime actor.  Then, as if crushed by his glory, he prolonged that marvelous effect, and stood a moment as if annihilated by the frantic and tumultuous shouts of the audience.

Chapter XVII.