“Just look, before they put the lights out, at the human wave curling at your feet.” I had never seen anything like it. After the electric lights had been shut off I began to dance. The rays of light enveloped me. There was a movement in the crowd, which reverberated in echoes like the mutterings of a storm. Exclamations followed, “Ohs” and “Ahs,” which fused into a sort of roar, comparable to the wailing of some giant animal. You can hardly imagine anything like it. It seemed to me that on my account alone this spectacle was presented by all this moving crowd before me. A calm ensued. The orchestra, not a very large one, seemed to me utterly ineffective in such a space. The audience, which was seated on the other side of the fountains, certainly could not hear it. The first dance came to its close. The extinguishing of my lighting apparatus left us, the public and me, in utter darkness. The uproar of the applause became something fantastic in the dead of night. It was like the beating of a single pair of hands, but so powerful that no noise in the world could be compared with it. I danced four times, and the different sensations expressed by the audience were most remarkable. They gave me the most vivid impression I have ever experienced. It was something immense, gigantic, prodigious. That day I had a feeling that the crowd was really the most powerful of monarchs. There are other monarchs as well as kings and crowds. Certain emotions are kings, too. At Nice, at the Riviera Palace Hotel, I noticed one day at a table near mine a young man of distinguished appearance whose glance met my own several times successively, almost, one would fancy, in spite of himself. During the following days we surveyed each other again and again at meal times, but without progressing further towards acquaintance. I had a number of friends with me. He was alone. Gradually my heart went out to him, although we had never exchanged a word. I did not know who he was, and I had no notion of seeking his acquaintance. Yet his brown eyes and his type of personality, calm and simple, exerted a sort of fascination over me. A week later I discovered, to my great confusion, that I was perpetually haunted by his eyes and that I could not forget his smile. One evening there was a ball at the hotel. I was invited, of course. As I have already said, I had a great many friends there. All at once, in a corner, I noticed my neighbour of the dining-hall. He spoke to no one. He was not dancing. I began to feel sorry to see him so entirely alone. My sympathy went out more than ever towards him. Some days later I was engaged for a performance that was to take place at the hotel in honour of a Russian grand duke, two kings and an empress.