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
everything leads me to believe that the elevation of his mind and the
inspiration of the art which he taught and practiced, would have
sufficed, in equal proportion with his faith, "to deliver him from
evil."
How could a man glide into the lower walks of life, whose mission it was
to set forth the types of moral beauty by opposing them, to use his
phrase, "to the hideousnesses of vice?"
Now, talent and faith meet face to face.
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