I have been requested to give the attitudes of the feet.  I do not like to give them because they are not feminine, and I abhor all that is not feminine.  However, as I have been asked for them, and as I wish to prove that my father had also given his attention to their study, here they are:  (1) The attitude of little children and of old men, expressing weakness; (2) that of absolute repose; (3) vehemence; (4) prostration; (5) transitory attitude, preparatory to (6) reverential walk; (7) vertigo, intoxication, which is an ignoble vertigo, or familiarity; (8) the alternative between the positions of offensive and defensive; (9) defiance. [Applause.] Oh!  I beg of you! [Deprecatingly.] It is horribly ugly in me; but in a man it is all right.

I shall now speak of the interesting role that the shoulder plays in the expression of emotions.  My father called the shoulder “the thermometer of passion.”  Indeed, the shoulders rise with every strong emotion.  If I say, “Oh! how angry I am!” without raising the shoulders, it sounds if not false at least weak; but listen, when I raise my shoulders:  “Oh! how angry I am!” Again, if I say, “How I love you!” the words are cold; but, with shoulders raised, listen, “How I love you!” Thus we see actors every day who portray different passions, but whose shoulders remain “cold;” they do not move us.

There is a very pretty observation to make about the elbow.  My father called it the “thermometer of pride and humility,” and used to call our attention to the different ways the soldiers carry their elbows.  You know we have a great many soldiers in France and we have a good, chance to observe them.  A corporal—­that is, nothing at all—­carries his elbows like this [elbows turned outward].  A sergeant, whose rank is a little higher than that of a corporal, carries them this way [elbows slightly drawn in].  By the time he becomes lieutenant he is used to authority, and does not have to show it off so much [elbows drawn in still more].  As for a general, one whose rank is the highest in the army, he walks with his arms hanging naturally at his sides.

Now let me tell you about the thumb.  My father being the son and the nephew of doctors, was interested enough in the science to enter, at one time, the school of medicine.  Here, while dissecting, he noticed that the thumb of a dead man falls inward toward the palm.  This led him to study the attitude of the thumb in life.  He would pass days in the garden of the Tuileries watching the nurses and the mammas carrying their babes, noting how their thumbs spread out to clasp the precious burden, and how the mothers’ hands spread wider open than those of hired servants; so he called the thumb “the thermometer of life.”