It is said that Talma brought out the intensity of his suffering by resting on the word pain.  This was wrong.  We should always seek the expression equivalent to that employed, to attain a certain value.

If, instead of the determinate conjunction that, we should have how much (combien), this would evidently be the important word.  This word has an elliptical form.  It evidently belongs to a preceding proposition.  It means:  “I could not express all that I suffer.”  Then 6 must be placed upon how much and not upon pain.

But the figure 6 here is a thermometer which indicates a degree of vitality; it does not express the degree of vitality; that is reserved for gesture.  We need not ask what degree this can give; its office is to express—­and this is a good deal—­a value mechanical and material, but very significant.  A reversion of values may constitute a falsehood.  Stage actors are sometimes indefinably comic in this way.

A Resume of the Degrees of Value.

To crown this unprecedented study upon language, we give in a table, a resume of the different degrees of value in the various parts of a discourse, relative to the initial consonant.

     The object of the preposition 1

     The verb to be and the prepositions 2

     The direct or indirect regimen 3

     The limiting (possessive and demonstrative) adjectives 4

     The qualifying adjectives 5

     The participles or substantives taken adjectively or
     attributively; that is to say, every word coming
     immediately after the verb, in fine, the attribute 6

     The adverbs 7

     Conjunctions, superlative ideas or additional figures 8

     The interjection 9

The pronoun is either subject or complement, and therefore included in the rest.  As for the article, it is not essential to a language; there is no article in Latin.

Thus the value of our ideas is expressed by figures.  We have only to reckon on our fingers.  We might beat time for the pronunciation of the consonants as for the notes of music.  Let the pupil exercise his fingers, and attain that skill which allows the articulation of a radical consonant only after he has marked with his finger the time corresponding to its figure.  If difficulties present themselves at first, so much the better; he will only the more accurately distinguish the value of the words.

Chapter V.

French and Latin Prosody.

French Prosody.

Prosody is the rhythmic pronunciation of syllables according to accent, respiration, and, above all, quantity.