The tribune, wherein the wise judges sat, was a large and artistic affair, built up before the gallery of the orchestra and flanked by broad steps leading to its summit. It was topped with the imperial escutcheon of Rome--battle-axes bound in fagots--and bore the legend, "_Mort aux Tyrants_," in bold letters. Beneath was a row of ghastly, bloody severed heads,--those of dead tyrants. The variety and originality of the costumes were bewildering. One Frenchman went as a tombstone, his back, representing a headstone, containing a suitable inscription and bearing wreaths of immortelles and colored beads. Another, from the Atelier Bon-nat, went simply as a stink, nothing more, nothing less, but it was potent. He had saturated his skin with the juice of onions and garlic, and there was never any mistaking his proximity. Many were the gay Bacchantes wearing merely a bunch of grapes in their hair and a grape-leaf. At intervals during the evening the crowd would suddenly gather and form a large circle, many deep, some climbing upon the backs of others the better to see, those in front squatting or lying upon the floor to accommodate the mass behind them. The formation of these circles was the signal for the _danse du ventre_.* * The danse du ventre (literally, belly-dance) is of Turkish origin, and was introduced to Paris by Turkish women from Egypt. Afterward these women exhibited it in the Midway Plaisance of the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, and then at the California Midwinter Exposition, San Francisco. As danced by Turkish women it consists of astonishing control and movements of the abdominal and chest muscles (hence its other name, muscle-dance), varied with more or less graceful steps and gyrations, with adjuncts, such as castanets, scarfs, etc., and the seemingly perilous use of swords. Such clothing is worn as least obscures the play of the muscles. It is danced to a particular Turkish air, monotonously repeated by an orchestra of male Turkish musicians, with Turkish instruments, and the dance is done solus. A dance closely analogous to it, though of a wholly independent origin, is the hula-hula of the Hawaiian women; but the hula-hula lacks the grace, dash, and abandon of the Turkish dance. The danse du ventre, as danced by French and American women who have "picked it up," is very different from that of the Turkish women--different both in form and meaning. Whatever of suggestiveness it may be supposed to carry is, in the adaptation, grossly exaggerated, and whatever of grace and special muscular skill, evidently acquired by Turkish women only from long and thorough drill, is eliminated. W. C. M. [Illustration: 0103] The name of some favorite model would be yelled, and the orchestra would strike up the familiar Oriental strain. And there was always a model to respond. Then the regular dancing would be resumed until another circle was formed and another favorite goddess of the four arts would be called out.