ly natural,
underlay his reading. A red handkerchief, which he knew how to draw from
his pocket at just the proper moment, always excited applause.

One day he conceived the idea of giving one of Bossuet's sermons at his
concert. Religious authority was very powerful at the time and forbade
it. Yet there would have been no sacrilege, and I regretted keenly that
I could not hear this magnificent prose delivered so wonderfully. Now
that religious authority has lost its secular support, we see things in
an entirely different way. Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints walk the
stage, speak in prose or verse, and sing. It would seem that no one is
shocked for there is no protest. For my own part I must frankly confess
that such pseudo-religious exhibitions are disagreeable. They disturb me
greatly and I can see no use in them.

* * * * *

In order to foster admiration for the old masters, Delsarte conceived
the idea of publishing a collection of pieces taken from their works
right and left, and, as a result, he created his _Archives du Chant_. He
had special type made and the publication was a marvel of beautiful
typography, correctness and good taste. At the beginning of each part
was a cleverly harmonised passage of church music. The support of a
publisher was necessary for the success of such a work, but Delsarte was
his own publisher and he met with no success at all. Similar but
inferior publications have been markedly successful.

Delsarte aimed at purity of text, but his successors have been forced to
modernize the works to make them accessible for the public. This fact is
painful. In literature the texts are studied and the endeavor is to
reproduce the writer's thought as closely as possible. In music it is
entirely different. With each new edition a professor is commissioned to
supervise the work and he adds something of his own invention.

Delsarte, a singer without a voice, an imperfect musician, a doubtful
scholar, guided by an intuition which approached genius, in spite of his
numerous faults played an important role in the evolution of French
music in the Nineteenth Century. He was no ordinary man. The impression
he gave to all who knew him was of a visionary, an apostle. When one
heard him speak with his fiery enthusiasm about these works of the past
which the world had forgotten, one could but believe that such oblivion
was unjust and desire to know these relics of another age.