riages, with their fine liveries and
magnificent clothes? Well, the day will come when they will only be too
happy to listen to you, proud of your presence in their _salons_,
envying your fame as a great artist."

Bambini's death left Delsarte poor and friendless. At fourteen, however,
he managed to get admitted into the Conservatoire, where, though he
labored hard, he met with harsh treatment and discouragement. The
professors disliked him for his reflective nature and persistent
questionings which brought to light the superficiality of their
acquirements; his fellow-pupils, for his exclusive devotion to study and
his reserve, the result of diffidence rather than of _hauteur_. His
professors were dictators, who, while differing from each other as
teachers, were yet united in frowning upon any attempt on the part of
their pupil to emancipate himself from the thraldom of conventionalism
and routine. Genius was a heresy for which they had no mercy.

Thrown upon his own resources, he soon developed, by careful observation
of nature and a constant study of cause and effect, a system and a style
radically differing from those of the professors and their servile
imitators.

One day, after having sung in his own style at one of the public
exhibitions--applauded, however, only by a single auditor,--he was
walking sadly and slowly in the court-yard of the Conservatoire, when a
lady and a gentleman approached him.

"Courage, my friend," said the lady. "Your singing has given me the
highest pleasure. You will be a great artist."

So spake Marie Malibran, the queen of song.

"My friend," said her companion, "It was I who applauded you just now.
In my opinion, you are a singer _hors de ligne_. When my children are
ready to learn music, you, above all others, shall be their professor."

These were the words of Adolphe Nourrit. The praises of Malibran and
Nourrit gave Delsarte courage, revived his hopes, and decided him to
follow implicitly the promptings of his genius. His extreme poverty
compelled him at last to apply to the Conservatoire for a diploma which
would enable him to secure a situation at one of the lyric theatres. It
was refused.

The autumn of 1829 found him a shabby, almost ragged applicant for
employment at the stage-door of the Opera Comique. Repeated rebuffs
failed to baffle his desperate pertinacity.

One day the director, hearing of the annoyance to which his
subordinates were subjected by Delsarte, det