Edgar S. Werner.

[Illustration:  Francois Delsarte.]

Extract from the Last Letter to the King of Hanover

I am at this moment meditating a book, singular for more than one reason, whose form will be no less novel than its contents.  Your majesty will read it, I hope, with interest.

The title of this book is to be:  “My Revelatory Episodes, or the History of an Idea Pursued for Forty Years.”

It will be my task to connect and condense into a single narrative all the circumstances of my life which had as logical consequences the numerous discoveries which it has been granted me to follow up, discoveries which my daily occupations left me neither time nor ability to set forth as a whole.

I know not what fate is reserved for this book.  I know not whether I shall succeed in seeing it in print during my lifetime.  The minds of men are, in these evil days, so little disposed to serious ideas, that it seems to me difficult to find a publisher disposed to publish things so far removed from the productions of the century.

But, however it may be, if I succeed in getting at least some part of my work printed, I crave, sire, your majesty’s permission to offer the dedication to you.  This favor I entreat not only as an honor, but also as an opportunity to pay public homage to all the kindnesses which your majesty has never ceased to lavish upon me.

Francois Delsarte.

Episode I.

The subject in question was a scene in the play of the Maris-Garcons.  The young officer, whose part I was studying, met his former landlord after an absence of several years, and as he owed him some money, he desired to show himself cordial.

“Ah! how are you, papa Dugrand?” he says, on encountering him.  This apostrophe is, therefore, a mixture of surprise, soldierly bluntness and joviality.

At the first words I was stopped short by an almost insurmountable difficulty.  This difficulty was all in my gesture.  Do what I would, my manner of accosting papa Dugrand was grotesque; and all the lessons that were given me on that scene, all the pains I took to profit by those lessons, effected no change.  I paced to and fro, saying and resaying the words:  “How are you, papa Dugrand?” Another scholar in my place would have gone on; but the greater the difficulty seemed to me, the higher my ardor rose.  However, I had my labor for my pains.

“That’s not it,” said my instructors.  Good heavens!  I knew that as well as they did; but what I did not know was why that was not it.  It seems that my professors were equally ignorant, since they could not tell me exactly in what my way differed from theirs.

The specification of that difference would have enlightened me, but all remained, with them as with me, subject to the uncertain views of a vague instinct.

“Do as I do,” they said to me, one after the other.