Although at this seance Delsarte appeared disposed to efface himself in favor of his brilliant representative, he kindly consented to speak a few words (and what a charming French lesson was his causerie!) and to present a specimen of his pantomimic powers.  The latter exhibition was really surprising.  He depicted the various passions and emotions of the human soul, by means of expression and gesture only, without uttering a single syllable; moving the spectators to tears, exciting them to enthusiasm, or thrilling them with terror at his will; in a word, completely magnetizing them.  Not a discord in his diatonic scale.  You were forced to admit that every gesture, every movement of a facial muscle, had a true purpose, a raison d’etre.  It was a triumphant demonstration.

The life of this great master and teacher, hereafter to be known as the founder of the Science of Dramatic Art, crowded with strange vicissitudes and romantic episodes, forms a record full of interest.

Francois Delsarte was born at Solesmes, Department of the North, France, in 1811.  His father was a physician, and his mother a woman of rare abilities, who taught herself to speak and write several languages.

Shortly after the battle of Waterloo a detachment of the allied troops was passing through Solesmes, in the midst of a dead and sullen silence, when the commandant’s quick ear caught the sound of a childish voice crying, “Vive l’Em-pe-weur!  Vive Na-po-le-on!” Every one smiled at the juvenile speaker’s audacity, except the stern officer whose name has, unfortunately, escaped the infamous celebrity it deserved.  By his orders, a platoon of soldiers sought out the child’s home and burned it to the ground; and thus little Francois Delsarte became the innocent cause of the ruin of his family.

The atrocities committed during the White Terror, of which this incident is an example, though passed over by history, are not forgotten by the survivors of that cruel period.  The leaders in the second terror could not plead the ignorance of Robespierre’s followers in excuse of their excesses, for they were nobles, magistrates, priests and officers of rank.

Delsarte’s early years were passed in the midst of cruel privations and domestic troubles, for even love forsook a home blighted by poverty.  His father, naturally proud and imperious, irritated by straitened circumstances, out of which there seemed no issue, crushed by the weight of obligations to others, lost heart and hope, became morose, sceptical and bitter, and treated his wife and family with such harshness and injustice, that Delsarte’s mother was finally compelled to abandon her husband.  She fled with her two boys to Paris, hoping there to make her talents available.  All her efforts, however, were fruitless, and she found herself on the verge of starvation.

One evening, as she sat with her two boys in her wretched room, tortured by their questions after their father, she could not suppress her tears.  Francois, the eldest, then nine years of age, tried to console her.  He told her that he was almost a man, able to earn his food and to take care of her and his little brother.  She listened to his prattle with a sad smile, kissed him and embraced him.