all
singing-teachers agree in formulating; a direction which consists in
augmenting the intensity of the sound in direct ratio to its acuteness.
Thus, to them, strange to say, the entire law of vocal shades would
consist in augmenting progressively the sound of the ascending phrase or
scale, and diminishing in the same proportion for a descending scale.
Now, nature, by a thousand irrefutable examples, directs us to do the
contrary, that is, she prescribes a decrease of intensity (in music,
_decrescendo_) proportionate to the ascensional force of the sounds.

Another blow, I thought, for my masters, or rather I receive it for
them, for they, poor fellows, do not feel it. But how can these
phenomena of nature have escaped them, and by what indescribable
aberration can they direct, under the name of law, a process absolutely
contrary to that so plainly followed by those same phenomena? However, I
added, every supreme error under penalty of being self-evident, must, to
endure, necessarily rest upon some truth or other. Now, on what truth do
so many masters claim to base so manifest an error? This is what we
must discover.

I was now convinced that caressing, tender and gentle emotions find
their normal expression in _high_ notes. This is beyond all doubt. Thus,
according to the foregoing examples, if we propose to say to a child in
a caressing tone that he is a darling, it would clearly be very bad
taste to bellow the words at him on the pretext that, according to
singing-teachers, the intensity of the sound is augmented in direct
ratio to its acuteness.

But my memory, as if to confirm this principle, and to show its contrast
with the custom admitted by those gentlemen, suggests to me other
instances derived from the same source. Let a mother be _angry_ with her
child and threaten him with punishment; she instantly assumes a grave
tone which she strives to render powerful and intense. Here, then, on
the one hand (and nature proclaims it), the voice decreases in intensity
in proportion as it rises higher; and, on the other hand, it increases
in proportion as it sinks. This double fact, undeniably established,
constitutes an unanswerable argument against the system in question. But
it is not, therefore, necessarily its radical and absolute refutation.
No, doubtless, whatever may be the significance and the number of the
facts opposed to the directions of those gentlemen, these facts do not
seem to exclude exceptions upon