harmony of the registers were perfect. It was a
miracle the like of which we shall probably never see again.

But if Duprez made a wonderful voice at the risk of breaking it, I have
always thought that Madame Carvalho owed her admirable diction, so
distinguishing a mark of her talent, to Delsarte. Delsarte was a
disastrous and deadly teacher of singing. No voice could stand up under
his methods, not even his own, although he attributed its loss to
teaching at the Conservatoire. But he studied deeply the arts of
speaking and gesture, and he was a past master in them.

I once attended a course he gave in these subjects. He stated highly
illuminating truths and gave the psychological reasons for accents and
the physiological reasons for the gestures. He determined the use of
gestures in some sort of scientific way. Mystic fancies were mixed up in
these questions.

It was extremely interesting to see him dissect one of Fontaine's fables
or a passage from Racine, and to hear him explain why the accent should
be on such a word or on such a syllable and not on another, to bring out
the sense. Although this course was so instructive, few took it, for
Delsarte was almost unknown to people. His influence scarcely extended
outside a narrow circle of admirers, but the quality made up for the
quantity. This was the circle of the old _Debats_, which was formerly
devoted exclusively to Romanticism, but at this time to the
classics--the set headed by Ingres in painting and Reber in music.
Theirs was a secluded and ascetic world in silent revolt against the
abominations of the century. One had to hear the tone of devotion in
which the members of this circle spoke of the ancients to appreciate
their attitude. Nothing in our day can give any idea of them. "They
say," one of the devotees once told me, "that the ancients learned
Beauty through a sort of revelation, and Beauty has steadily degenerated
ever since."

Such false notions were, however, professed by the most sincere people
who were deeply devoted to art. So this group, which had no influence on
their own contemporaries, nevertheless, without knowing it or wishing to
do so, played a useful role.

As we know, the public was divided into two camps. On one side were the
partisans of Melody, opera-comique, the Italians, and, with some effort,
of grand opera. Opposed to them were the partisans of music in the grand
style--Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Sebastian Bach, although he w