But if Delsarte appeared depressed, he was not to be conquered.  His restless spirit betrayed him to those whom his mystic fervor might have misled.

“Many persons,” he said, “feel confident that they are to hear me recite or sing.

“Nothing of the sort, gentlemen; I shall not recite, and I shall not sing, because I desire less to show you what I can do, than to tell you what I know.”

Soon a wonderful change passed over him.  It seemed as if he had been covered with ashes for an instant, only to come forth in a more dazzling light.  Hardly had his audience felt a slight sense of revolt at the words:  “I shall not sing,” than they found themselves in the presence of an orator not inferior to the greatest in the force of his images, and who, with all his serious and pathetic eloquence, never forgot the studied touches of the poet, or the dainty style of the artist.

But I will not delay my reader to listen to me!  It is Delsarte himself who should be heard.  I will give a few extracts: 

“I count,” he said, “on the novelty, the absolute novelty, of the things which I shall teach you:  Art is the subject of this conversation.

“Art is divine in its principle, divine in its essence, divine in its action, divine in its aim.

“Ah! gentlemen, there are no pleasures at once more lasting, more noble and more sacred than those of Art.

“Let us glance around us:  not a pleasure which is not followed by disappointment or satiety; not a joy which does not entail some trouble; not an affection which does not conceal some bitterness, some grief, and often some remorse!

“Everything is disappointing to man.  Everything about him changes and passes away.  Everything betrays him; even his senses, so closely allied to his being and to which he sacrifices everything, like faithless servants, betray him in their turn; and, to use an expression now but too familiar, they go on a strike, and from that strike, gentlemen, they never return.

* * * * *

“The constituent elements of the body sooner or later break into open rebellion, and tend to fly from each other as if filled with mutual horror.

“But under the ashes a youthful soul still lives, and one whose perpetual youth is torture; for that soul loves, in spite of the disappointments of its hard experience; it loves because it is young; it loves just because it is a soul and it is its natural condition to love.

“Such is the soul, gentlemen.  Well! for this poor, solitary and desolate soul, there are still unutterable joys; joys not to be measured by all which this world can offer.  These joys are the gift of Art.  No one grows old in the realms of Art.”

After a pungent criticism of the official teaching of art as hitherto practiced, Delsarte explained the chief elements of aesthetics.  He said: 

“AEsthetics, henceforth freed from all conjecture, will be truly established under the strict forms of a positive science.”