[Illustration: GOGOL’S “NOSE”. AN ILLUSTRATION] opening of the rocks one sees a meadow upon which a tropical heat lies heavy. The natural bridge over which we presently see the nymph Echo pass lamenting and garbed in a mourning robe of violet, forms the second tier, raised above the scenery of the foreground in much the same manner as one sees it raised in the stage settings of Torelli in the seventeenth century, or as one also sees it in the “Parnassus” of Andrea Mantegna at the Louvre. And it is the vivacious and manycolored figures of the Greece on the terra=cottas that monopolize the scene, clad in fresh and simple colors--blue and green that match with the color of the sky and the forest, lemon=yellow and brick=red that form patches on the short white tunics. Bakst reserved, however, for the “Afternoon of a Faun”, the pastoral poem for which Debussy received his inspiration from a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, his attempt at solving the paradox of setting forth upon the stage the authentic rhythm of the figures that keep turning forever on the sides of Greek vases. The background is an old forest; a convenient hill, on which the Faun reclines, narrows the platform and leaves only a small proscenium free. On this proscenium the dancers project themselves in profile, dressed in long tunics with frilled folds like the fluting of an Ionic column. Moving on a single elevation they convey the idea of having but two dimensions like the arabesques that decorate a surface. Bakst does not, however, allow himself to be imprisoned in this three=fold domain. His imagination is forever travelling along thousands of crossing paths. And quite willingly he stops at the great crossroads of civilization, where hostile worlds confront each other and establish themselves. Of such a character is the exuberant “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”, where the Rome of Heliogabalus, closed about by Asia, conveys to us both the naiveness of the mediæval mysteries and the imagination of the Quatrocentrist painters. Again, there is “Pisanelle”, another French work from the pen of Gabriele d’Annunzio. It is a poem of the Mediterranean, in which the Latin West, feudal and mystic, clashes with the rigid and solemn Byzantium, while the imperishable perfume of Hellas rises from the land of Cyprus from which Aphrodite sprang forth. It would take volumes to enumerate all the pictorial elements in these productions, and even then one could not construct a component whole. But the large architectural outlines, the clusters of small black and gold columns which form the portal for the “Jeu de la Sainte Courtisane”, [Illustration: LIII STAGE DECORATIONS FOR “THAMAR”] [Illustration: LIV SADKO] [Illustration: LV THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET “LA POUPÉE AUX DENTELLES”] [Illustration: LVI MODERN COSTUME (A “FANTAISIE”). (GOUACHE)] the enormous twisted columns in the “Conseil des faux Dieux”, over whom Sebastian triumphs--these impress themselves indelibly upon one’s memory.