M. Fokine has been wiser than to impose upon these irresponsible creatures of the musician’s fancy the burden of a formal plot. They merely flit across the stage in a succession of amorous episodes which take place during a masked fête--Pierrot deceived and suffering, Pantalon duped, Eusebius romantic, Florestan impetuous, Chiarina sentimental and Estrella turbulent. M. Bakst, the decorator, has completed the ballet by making it an exquisitely delicate artistic whole. The tinsel glitter and vast expenditure of means upon which the conventional ballet is usually built up has been utterly discarded. In its place is a simplicity verging on bareness, an economy of material in which every tone and line has an individual value, and bespeaks the guidance of a single directing mind. The curtain rises upon an almost empty scene, the ante-chamber of a ball-room. The backcloth is a broad band of purplish blue uplifting a deep frieze of red tulips. The furniture of the scene consists solely of two droll tiny striped sofas, crouching against the black and gold dado, which instantly put us on the tiptoe of expectation and give the keynote of airy mockery that characterises the piece. Suddenly the tall curtains of this fastidious ante-chamber are parted and Chiarina and Estrella, followed by their distraught lovers, scamper in and out again. Gradually the room fills with crinolined figures, flashing amorous glances through the slits of their silk masks, and comical gentlemen whose quaintly cut green and golden brown jackets seem to travesty their woeful passions. The gaiety of the music dances through the shifting lights and softly flowing lines. And through this happy and heartless crowd moves the tragic [Illustration: LEONTIEV AND LEPOUKHAVA IN _Le Carnaval_ _Photograph: Bert, Paris_] figure of Pierrot, whose unrequited love his fellows make a mock of. His costume and attitude are a masterpiece of design. His sleeves, a world too long, droop far below his finger-tips, forming a scheme of painful angles which most poignantly express his grotesque and lamentable passion.