feel that we are under a certain domination?"

He gave me several other explanations touching the angelic hierarchy. I
considered them very poetic, very ingenious--but were they also
orthodox? I am not competent to judge.

It was impossible to say at the first glance, how the influence of this
theosophy made itself felt in this sensitive character, full as it was
of surprises. Delsarte was born good, generous, above the petty
tendencies which deform and degrade the human type. On these diverse
points, religious faith could scarcely show its effect; but he also
declared himself to be irritable and violent--he confessed to a
dangerous fickleness--still, he would readily have slandered himself in
the interests of his faith.

Whatever the cause of this acquired serenity, Delsarte did not always
refuse to satisfy his native impulses. I have already alluded to cases
in which these returns to impetuous vivacity occurred, and how he rose
above these relapses. Whether his peaceful spirit arose from religious
feeling, or whether it was the result of moral strength, it breathed the
spirit of the gospel; but it must also be confessed that our artist
mingled with it much worldly grace. What matters it? Uncertainty has no
inconveniences in such a matter.

It was particularly on the occasion of those sudden fits of passion to
which the human conscience does not always attach due weight, that
Delsarte laid great stress upon supernatural intervention.

Oh! what would he have done without that powerful aid, with his lively
sensibilities--with his too loving heart?

I have no opinion to offer in regard to the shield which efficacious
grace and the palladium of the faith may form for dangerous tendencies;
for Catholics, that is a matter for the casuist or the confessor to
decide; but, as far as Delsarte is concerned, had he beaten down Satan
in a way to rouse the jealousy of St. Michael, had he made the heathen
Socrates give precedence to him in patience, wisdom and firmness, I
should regard that victory as the triumph of the sacred principles of
the eternal morality, of that which sums up, in a single group, all the
supreme precepts of all religions and all philosophies, rather than as a
result of external practices.

It is by placing myself at this culminating point, that I have
succeeded in explaining to my own satisfaction the true stimulus of the
artist-thinker, in spite of all appearances and all contradictions; and
everythin