For a time Diaghileff allowed himself to drift. As usual he treated this craze for the past on a grand scale. He even resumed it in a definite effort of which I shall speak later. But for the present he and his friends felt themselves reduced to the role of custodians of a museum or of benevolent guides, a thing that was repugnant to his ambition and his temperament. He looked for a way out. The stage alone seemed to offer it. Naturalism had just won its greatest triumphs, thanks to the Moscow Art Theater. But if comedy was taken possession of by the naturalists, the opera and the ballet could react. Already Mamontov, the famous mæcenas who discovered Shaliapin, had ordered stage decorations from the Moscow painters, Vroubel and Golovin. At Petrograd everything was given a trial. I cannot, without exceeding the limits set me, speak at greater length of what became of this movement; some day, perhaps, I shall be able to strike its balance. As a matter of fact, I have already had to enlarge considerably upon my subject in order to set the subject of my sketch down in his proper surroundings, in that unique atmosphere, created by historical and personal contingencies, which is ignored for the most part by the Russian people, and which entirely escapes the attention of the foreign reader. Besides, this union of a handful of men who were determined to restore the artistic greatness of their country was so brotherly, so fraternal that it would be wrong to differentiate between their respective roles and artificially to isolate their efforts. [Illustration] [Illustration: AN ALMEE. “SHEHERAZADE” BALLET] THE THREE KNOCKS