When I questioned him about this period of his life of which there are few traces left, Bakst spoke about them quite eloquently, yes, even persistently. He took evident pleasure in this confession; he seemed even to relish the mortification that it must have cost. Was it that in this race toward the abyss he tasted something of that spirit of adventure, of that happy faculty of spending without counting, of giving oneself body and soul to God or the Devil, which, indeed, was a part of his nature? Or was he dreaming of those pretty hands of women, slender but strong, which stroked his curly hair? As far as we are concerned, we must content ourselves with recounting briefly the outstanding facts in the early history of our friend and hero. The most important of these is a long stay abroad. At Paris he made friends with Albert Edelfeldt, a Finnish painter and a remarkable man, to whose lot it fell to break the ground for the birth of a national art in his own country, in that he transmitted to it the enlightened knowledge of France. It should be noted in passing that all the Norse revivals which endowed the Scandinavian countries with an intense and original artistic life had their origin on the banks of the Seine. Edelfeldt was neither a creative genius nor an artist in the vanguard. He stuck to the cautious methods of a Bastien=Lepage. But he was a forceful and able painter. Some of his canvases are to be found in Paris, among them, if I remember correctly, his portrait of Pasteur. The habit of working outdoors, the study of daylight and its effect upon massive subjects which Bakst pursued with his new friend who also in some respects became his teacher, contributed powerfully toward his success in performing the enormous task that was soon thrust upon his youthful energy. The Russian government asked the Prodigal Son [Illustration: IX “SHEHERAZADE” BALLET. FIRST EUNUCH. (GOUACHE)] [Illustration: X AN INFERIOR DEITY. “NARCISSUS” BALLET. (GOUACHE)] of the Imperial Academy to paint a canvas that was to have for its subject the arrival of Admiral Avellan in Paris. Perhaps the reader remembers that this visit which, unless I am very much mistaken, took place in 1893, was one of the first formal ceremonies arranged in connection with the nascent Russo=French alliance. This canvas, the result of painstaking and honest labor, which displays a freshness of color and a virtuosity of touch that is by no means vulgar, is preserved today in the Navy Museum at Petrograd. Was the young rebel of yesterday to become the Roll or the Mentzel of the imperial fastes? Today we know that nothing of the sort happened.