I might recount numberless proofs of admiration equal to mine. One
evening, at a lecture, the lesson turned upon a song from "William
Tell:"
"Be motionless, and to the ground
Incline a suppliant knee."
For stage effect, Delsarte called in one of his children, about eight or
nine years old.
The subject is well known: William has been condemned to strike from a
distance, with the tip of his arrow, an apple placed on the head of his
child.
William bids the child pray to God, and implores him not to stir.
Reversing the action of all actors whom we usually see, the artist
recited the fragment in a wholly concentric fashion; he did not declaim;
he made no gesture toward the audience; but what emotion in his voice,
and how his gaze hovered over and around the dear creature who was
perhaps to be forever lost to him! He called the child to him, he
pressed him to his heart; he laid his hands on that young head. His
caresses had the lingering slowness of supreme and final things, the
solemnity of a last benediction.
"This point of steel may terrify thine eyes!"
says the text, and the tragedian, enlarging the meaning of the words by
inflection and accent, showed that this precious life hung on a thread
and depended on the firmness of his hand.
At the last phrase:
"Jemmy, Jemmy, think of thy mother,
She who awaits us both at home!"
his voice became pathetic to such a degree that it was difficult to
endure it.
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