adly; for their future he dreamed all the dreams of
the Arabian Nights. Meantime, he played with them so happily that he
seemed to take a personal delight in it.

He gave them all the joys of this life that were within his reach, and
it was well that he did so! Alas! of the dreams of glory cherished for
these beloved beings, some few were realized, but many faded promptly
with the existence of those who called them forth.

But we must not anticipate. At the time of which I speak the children
were growing and developing, each according to its nature, in full
freedom. Those who felt a vocation seized on the wing--rather than they
received from irregular lessons--some fragments of that great art which
was taught in the school.

Marie learned while very young to reproduce with marvelous skill what
were called _the attitudes_ and the physiognomic changes. Madeleine
delighted in making caricatures which showed great talent. The features
of certain pupils and frequenters of the lectures were plainly
recognizable in these sketches made by a childish hand.

Gustave was a child of an open face and broad shoulders. One incident
will show his originality.

A strange lady came to the master's house one day either to ask a
hearing or offer a pupil. She met this charming boy.

"M. Delsarte?" she asked.

"I am he, madam!" replied Gustave without flinching.

"Very good," said his questioner, laughing, "but I wish to speak to your
father."

This same Gustave who, to a certain degree, followed in his father's
footsteps, was struck down a few years after him, at the age of
forty-two.

What a striking application of Victor Hugo's lines:

"And both are dead.... Oh Lord, all powerful is thy right hand!"

Gustave's career seemed to open readily and smoothly. Not that he could
approach his father from a dramatic point of view; he had not his
absolute synthesis of talents, and his figure was not suited to the
theatre; as a singer, his voice was weak, but what a charm and what a
style he had! Although his voice was not adapted to every part,
although he had not that range of the vocal scale which permits one to
attack any and every composition, still, its sympathetic, tender and
penetrating quality did ample justice to all that is most exquisite in
romance. When you had once heard that voice, guided by the force of his
father's grand method, you never forgot its sincerity and melancholy; it
haunted you and left you impatient to