For the grand ballet they all worked together around the furnace, whence they drew a thousand pretty novelties to give to the ladies in the audience--essences, liqueurs, glass jewellery, mirrors, bracelets, Cyprus powder, paint and other treasures, very much as presents are given at Cotillons and big fancy dress balls to-day. Yet another delightful production of this period must be chronicled, namely, the “Ballet of Tobacco,” danced at Turin, the last day of Carnival, 1650. The scene represented the Isle of Tobago, “_from which tobacco took its name, and gave happiness to the nations to whom the gods had given this plant_. First entered four High Priests of that country, who drew forth snuff from certain golden boxes which they carried, and threw this powder in the air to appease the Winds and Tempests. Then with long pipes they smoked around an altar, making of their smoking tobacco a sort of sacrifice to their favourite Deities. For the second entry two Indians were twisting into a rope tobacco leaves. Two others were pounding it in mortars to reduce it to powder, and made the third entrance scene. The fourth was of snuff-takers, who sneezed and presented the snuff to each other, taking it in pinches with amusing ceremony; while the fifth was a band of smokers gathered together in an Academy or place set apart for smoking, wherein Turks, Spaniards, Poles and other nationalities received the tobacco from the Indians and proceeded to take it in their different ways.” Such, in brief, were some of the continental ballets of the first half of the seventeenth century, a period, it must be admitted, not lacking in ingenuity, or resource in means of entertainment. CHAPTER XI THE TURNING POINT: LE ROI SOLEIL AND HIS ACADEMY OF DANCING, 1651-1675 For some two centuries Italy had amused herself with Ballet as a courtly entertainment; and so, during one, had England and France. Now, in 1651, it was France who was to give the lead to Europe, for in February of that year Louis-Quatorze, then a lad of thirteen, appeared in a ballet by Benserade, entitled “Cassandra,” and this was the first of many in which he took part until, at the age of thirty, he withdrew from the stage and gave his farewell performance in the ballet of “Flora” in 1669. Strange, is it not, to think of a king as a ballet-dancer? Yet, had not our own King Henry VIII been among the joyous masquers? But Louis XIV was to become more than a mere participant in Ballet--he was to become the virtual founder of modern Ballet as seen on the stage; for it was he--universal patron of the arts--who was to found a Royal Academy of Dance and Music, to the existence and encouragement of which the modern development of both arts is largely due.