The absence of any rule applicable to the subject caused the most complete anarchy among the listeners.  One thought that the word to be emphasized must be monster—­as indicating an object of terror; another gave the preference to the adjective huge.  Still another thought that vomits demanded the most expressive accent, from the ugliness of that which it expresses.

Delsarte repeated the lines: 

     “The wave draws near, it breaks, and ... vomits up before our
     eyes.”

It was on the word and that he concentrated all the force of his accent; but giving it, by gesture, voice and facial expression, all the significance lacking to that particle, colorless in itself, as he pronounced the word, the fixity of his gaze, his trembling hands, his body shrinking back into itself, while his feet seemed riveted to the earth, all presaged something terrible and frightful.  He saw what he was about to relate, he made you see it; the conjunction, aided by the actor’s pantomime, opened infinite perspectives to the imagination; his words had only to specify the fact, and to justify the emotion which had accumulated in the interval.

But this particle, which here allows of eight degrees, is much diminished when it fills the office of a simple copulative.  The extent of the word or the syllable is always subordinate to the sense of the phrase; in the latter case it does not require more than the figure 2.

Chapter V.

The Recitation of Fables.

Some years before his death Delsarte substituted for his concerts, lectures in which he explained his scientific doctrines and his philosophy of art.  He also supplied the place of song by the recitation of certain fables selected from La Fontaine.  He was not less perfect in this style than in the interpretation of the great roles of tragedy and grand lyric poems; but it must be acknowledged, that under this new guise, his talent could not display itself in all its amplitude; save for the facial expression which gave the lessons of the apologue a variety of outline of which La Fontaine himself perhaps never dreamed ... and in spite of the fine and scholarly accent which he could give to all those clever beasts, he was, on many points, deprived of his power and his prestige:  how endow a lion with the proud poses of Achilles; and lend the foolish grasshopper the satanic charm of Armida?

Instead of noble or terrific attitudes, his gesture was confined to a few movements of forearm or hand; of his fingers, when the intentions were more subtle, more refined ...  Still it was always most pleasant to hear him.  It was Delsarte restrained, but not diminished.  If you did not recover in his speaking voice that sort of enchantment with which his slightly-veiled tone pierced the soul, his accent remained so pure, so intelligent, that you were none the less ravished.