The great theatrical sensation of the mid-’forties was the famous _Pas de Quatre_, composed of Lucile Grahn, Fanny Cerito, Carlotta Grisi, and Marie Taglioni, the last-named making a welcome return to the stage after an absence of some years. This was in 1845. Taglioni’s reappearance and a dispute between the dancers as to the order of their _entrée_ gave the event a handsome advertisement. In the end the difficulty was settled by Lumley, the manager of the Opera, deciding that, as Mlle. Taglioni herself was indifferent as to when she made her entrance, they should appear according to age, the youngest first; and in consequence Lucile Grahn led the quartette, a crescendo of applause finishing in a terrific climax as Taglioni, greatest of them all, appeared, and, as one witness declared, “the whole house went clean mad.” Marie Taglioni, greatest of the four, was the first to give the impulse towards the creation of that new school which the others represented. The technique of all four was virtually the same, that which had always been traditional. In the foundations of their art all were of the old school. All had been thoroughly drilled in the eternal “five positions.” But in the spirit of this art all were as new for their period, and by contrast with the eighteenth-century school, as Camargo had been when she first quickened that school by the introduction of a fresher inspiration and new miracles of execution; and as Sallé had been when she had striven to replace the convention of pannier and cuirasse for classic hero and heroine, with a costume nearer to Hellenic truth and beauty. And of the four who made theatrical dancing in the ’forties of last century what it was, Taglioni was the pioneer. She was one of a family of Taglionis. There was Louise, who had won distinction at the Opera under the Empire, and who had a sister so beautiful that when she left the stage to marry an Italian gentleman and settle down at Venice, it came to be a proverb, “To see Venice and the beautiful Contarini.” Marie was the niece of these two. Born at Stockholm in 1804, she was the daughter of Philip Taglioni (1777-1871), a ballet-master from Milan, and a Swedish mother, _née_ Anna Karsten, whose grandfather had been a famous actor and singer at the Swedish Court. In these two strains probably we have one of the secrets of Marie Taglioni’s art, for, while from the Italian side she would have inherited that passion for technique which is innate in the Latin races, from the maternal she would have received the impulse towards a poetic and dreamy idealism which is characteristic of the North.