The prologue, which represents the busy coming and going in a doll shop in the capital city of 1830, is acted by a big crowd of people--shop=attendants, customers of every sort, small merchants and grand ladies, lackeys and grenadiers, mailmen and policemen produced on the stage as the naive action unfolds. All these masques and costumes are absolutely authentic, but they seem fragile and delicate like a dream. The fact is that the documents from which the <g>dossier</g> of the decorator was constructed were anything but commonplace. Bakst did not seek his information from the more direct sources supplied by the engravings of that time: he went to the show cases of porcelain ware. Too little are the charming products of Russian porcelain makers--the Gardners and the Popovs--known. To be sure, they often merely misrepresent, in their style, the models from Saxony or Sèvres, but they do it with a naive flash of pure color that appeals to rustic artisans. But side by side with such imitations these obscure Russian artists modeled an entire little world of their own in tender clay--cossacks in uniform, drunken serfs, nude women, coiffed “en cabriolet” and burying their chilly hands in fur muffs. Whatever tastefully conventional there was in these figures, Bakst transposed into the language of the theater. Ever since that time this form of ballad (or “boutade”, as it was called [Illustration: XXIX SUBMARINE MONSTERS (“SADKO” OPERA). (GOUACHE)] [Illustration: XXX STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE BALLET “WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR” (SECOND VERSION). GOUACHE] [Illustration: XXXI A BACCHANALIAN DANCE (JOSEPH) BY R. STRAUSS] [Illustration: XXXII Mr. NIJINSKY AS “BLUE GOD”. (GOUACHE)] in the time of Cardinal Mazarin), the dancing for which had been designed by Serge Legat, a splendidly endowed young man who committed suicide in a fit of passion and despair over a love affair, has maintained its place on the program. Examples of it are the “Carnival”, “Phantom of the Rose” and “Secret of Suzanne”, that delightful little=work in which one already sees Napoleon evolving from Bonaparte. [Illustration: IN UPPER SAVOY. DRAWING]