We have already seen how Bakst discovered the tragic and magnificently barbaric Greece of pre=Hellenic and ante=European times which he brought to the stage, by designing stage settings the rude grandeur of which formed a fit background for the growing despair of Antigone or for the doom that overwhelmed Oedipus. Once again he brings out all the anguish in the fear of the ancients, the primitive hysteria of people bewildered by the cruel play of unfathomable forces--the hot wind which blows from the Asiatic desert and which leashes the blood almost into insanity, the triumph of Eros in the midst of fratricide and horror. He staged this “Helen of Sparta” by Verhaeren for Mme. Rubinstein--this play in which a great modern poet incarnates his intent, violent and prophetic soul in the characters of a legend which had already absorbed the Grand Old Man of Weimar. The return of Helen, however, which for Goethe had been the symbol of restored and re=born classical antiquity, to the Flemish poet seemed a passionate and terribly human dilemma hidden under an archaic guise. [Illustration: XLIX GALISSON, PRINCE CHARMANT’S TUTOR LOUIS XIV BALLET (PAVLOVA TOURNEE). GOUACHE] [Illustration: L THE BIRD OF FIRE (ANOTHER VERSION). GOUACHE] [Illustration: LI THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHWOMAN] [Illustration: LII THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHMAN] [Illustration: STAGE DECORATION FOR “LÂCHETÉ”] Now, Bakst designed a bare and harsh setting for the martyrdom of Helen, who is condemned to be coveted unto death by all who come in contact with her: the ground reduced to lime, stones that have a burnt smell, heavy gates of the royal fortress, smoke of woodpiles--in short, everything in this volcanic landscape is a latent menace. This grim and desolate face of Hellas is seen for the last time in an act of “Daphnis and Chloe” where one sees the pirates dancing a war-dance among the steep declivities of the red rocks. But how sweet is the idyll which they disturb! All that there is of Ionic sweetness envelops this pastoral scene. I know nothing in the entire work of Bakst that is equal to these tender, fresh, damp greens of the meadow and of the forest where the two children walk about displaying the charming torment of love that knows nothing of itself. It is a sketch for the first act, but in it lies all of the Greece of Theocritus, of Moschus, and also of André Chenier’s Aoristys. Thus the short novel by Longus [Illustration: PROJECT OF A CRYSTAL CUP] which had already inspired the painter Pierre Bonnard to draw the lithographs which constitute the lyric flower of his work, live once more through the brush of the great Russian. The mythological world had, besides, already been displayed in another work of Bakst’s,--“Narcissus”. The setting is unique: in the foreground is a spring bordered by large somber rocks and shaded by branches of trees which droop into a brook of emerald. Through an