My father always used to say to his pupils:  “Be warm outwardly, cold inwardly.”  He wanted them to pass suddenly from one great emotion to another.  All great actors do so.  He would point to a portrait of Garrick, representing the great actor with one-half of his face laughing, the other half weeping.  He himself, in his lessons, after having given expression to some pathetic sentiment, would become immediately his own kind self again.  He insisted on self-possession.  Often when I was a little girl, and would slip into the room during his lessons, for I loved to listen to them, and would find him portraying some terrible passion, he would stop suddenly, seeing the expression of horror on my face, and would burst out laughing and catch me in his arms, saying:  “Poor little one, are you frightened?”

“The artist,” said my father, “must move, interest and convince.”  Gesture is the agent of the heart.  Gesture must always precede speech.  “Make me feel in advance,” he used to say; “if it is something frightful, let me read it on your face before you tell me of it.”  To illustrate the practice of gesture before speech, I will now recite the fable of “The Cock, the Cat and the Mouse.” [Here followed the recitation of the fable.]

My father once held his whole audience under a spell, showing them, through the medium of a little girl of eight, a hundred different ways of saying, “That dog is pretty.”  I will show you one or two ways If I really think the dog is pretty, I will say it in this tone, “That dog is pretty.”  If the dog’s coat is soiled, I will say in a different tone, “That dog is pretty.”  And if the dog has rubbed against my dress, there will be a vexed tone, “That dog is pretty!”

My father used to divide orators into “artists in words and artists in gesture.”  Those who are simply artists in words are those who do not move you.  Lamartine said of my father, “He is art itself.”  Theophile Gautier said of him that he “took possession” of his public.

In 1848 the National Guard was appointed to guard the public monuments.  My father, who was a member of the Guard, had his station near an archbishopric.  A poor fellow was arrested one day who looked suspicious; he was searched and a chaplet was found on him.  The cry arose immediately that he should be drowned.  The poor man was being hustled off when my father stopped them, saying that he claimed his part of the punishment, and he drew from his own pocket a chaplet and showed it to them.  Oh! my father was kind.  He was goodness itself.  He was often asked to give lectures at the court, but he would answer:  “I do not sell my talent, I give it.”  He was especially fond of his poor pupils, those who did not pay him; he would often invite them to dine with him.