If you cannot conquer your defect, make it beloved.

* * * * *

A movement should never be mixed with a facial twist.

* * * * *

Things that are said quietly should sing themselves in the utterance.

Part Sixth.

Lecture and Lessons Given by Mme. Geraldy (Delsarte’s Daughter) in
America.

[Illustration:  Mme. Marie Delsarte-Geraldy.]

Lecture

Delivered by Mme. Geraldy at the Berkeley Lyceum, New York, February 6, 1892.

Ladies: 

When I made up my mind to come to this country it was not with the object of exhibiting myself, but to speak to you of my father.  In your country my father is much talked of.  In my country, unfortunately, he is forgotten.  My father did not write anything—­that is a terrible thing!  He expected to do so some day, but he always put it off.  At last he decided to do so during the war—­our unfortunate war!  He did not have many lessons to give at that time, for nobody thought of taking any.  This gave him leisure to write.  His work was to have borne the title, “My Revelatory Episodes.”  He had only written five chapters when he died.  It was to bring to you these five chapters that I came to America.  But as soon as I began to speak of them I was stopped.  “Why do you tell us this?” they said; “we know all this already.”  I then discovered that the books written on my father by the Abbe Delaumosne and by Mme. Angelique Arnaud had been translated and published in this country.  Mme. Arnaud’s book is the better of the two, but it is not practical—­not at all practical.

I have gathered together what I remember in the form of lectures, which I offer to you.  I have been asked for examples; I shall give you examples.  I will begin, however, by giving you a little biographical sketch of my father, and by telling you how he happened to make his discovery.  He was the son of a country doctor, a man poor but original.  My father was still a very little boy when his father sent him and his younger brother to Paris.  There they were apprenticed to a jeweler and made bands of gold.  Soon the little brother died, and my father was the only one to follow him to the cemetery.  On his way back, after the burial, he fell fainting on the plain.  When he regained consciousness he heard music in the distance, and, not knowing whence it came, thought it was the music of the angels.  Since then he dreamed of nothing but music; he wanted to hear all he could; he longed to study it.  One day he heard two little urchins singing in the street.  He asked them:  “Do you know music?” The urchins replied:  “Yes!” “Will you teach it to me?” “Yes, certainly,” and they sang a scale for him.  “Is that all there is of music?” “Why, yes.”