Happy the blond student in green blouse who finds death as he pursues a dream of love; he will not see it. He will not know hunger or exile or disgrace. Who of us Russians would not envy him? Such were the two faces of Russia which were exhibited by two painters who are more than painters,--Benois who has the power of retrospective divination, Bakst who possesses an understanding of modern life and of its tumultuous forces. But behold! the curtain which has just fallen on the bristling, rough, malicious scenery of “Lâcheté”, rises once more to unfold before our eyes a third Russia--a Russia debonair and drunken, ignorant and full of spirit. The vaudeville act “Old Moscow” depicts a rich and opulent city of merchants wearing their <g>kaftans</g>, of free carousals, of a jovial savagery. Two frames, reaching to the knees of the actors, form the stage setting. On them is a miniature reproduction of the orphaned capital with its forty times forty cupolas, encircled by the crenelated walls of the Kremlin. And amidst this delightfully exaggerated parody of a stage full of moujik=bourgeois, we see funny human beings, overbubbling with good health, moving about dressed in wide, stiff skirts that are sky=blue or tri=colored; likewise country women weighing a hundred kilos. The thing that is of importance above everything else in this caricature composed without any masked thought is that aroma of the land which, even in its funniest moments, makes the tears come to the eyes of Moscow <g>émigrés</g>. Today Bakst is completely absorbed by this forgotten world which rises about him on a background of a distant past. He is consumed with an appetite for Russian memories, emotions and visions. Each day in his studio a population of Russian figures keeps multiplying--models and groups of which not only their costume but their very attitude has something indefinably national about them, something profoundly popular, in short, something authentic. And to what purpose? The artist as yet does not know. Once the actors are placed upon the stage, he says to himself, the play will start spontaneously. And in pursuing his enormous and unceasing labors he lets things take their course without hastening them.-- We have accompanied Bakst up to his last station. It is time, therefore, for this sketch to end. The writer takes leave of his readers and descends into the audience in order with his readers to await the rising of the curtain for the next act of the most beautiful of plays: the life of a grand and noble artist. [Illustration] [Illustration] CONTENTS TEXT The Story of Leon Bakst’s Life. Preface 13 The Yellow Drawing Room 15 The Ungrateful Age 18 The Two Sphinxes 32 A Wrong Start 40