As "Antigone" was given at Orange, the softening influences which had subdued the harshness of "Oedipus" still farther were extended, making its deep tenderness still deeper and more appealing. The inspersion of music of a curiously penetrating, moving sort--composed by Saint-Saens in an approximation to Grecian measures--added a poetic undertone to the poetry of the situations and of the lines; and a greater intensity was given to the crises of the play--an artistic reproduction of the effect caused by the accident of the night before--by extinguishing the electric lamps and so bringing the action to a focus in the mellow radiance which came from the golden footlights and richly lighted the stage. The poetic key-note was struck in the opening scene: when _Antigone_ and _Ismene_, robed all in white, entered together by the royal doorway and stood upon the upper plane of the great stage, alone--and yet so filled it that there was no sense of emptiness nor of lack of the ordinary scenery. Again, the setting was not an imitation, but the real thing. The palace from which the sisters had come forth rose stately behind them. Beside the stage, the branches of the fig-tree waved lightly in the breeze. In the golden glow of the footlights and against the golden background the two white-robed figures--their loose vestments, swayed by the wind, falling each moment into fresh lines of loveliness--moved with an exquisite grace. And all this visible beauty reinforced with a moving fervour the penetrating beauty of _Antigone's_ avowal of her love for her dead brother--tender, human, natural--and of her purpose, born of that love, so resolute that to accomplish it she would give her life. [Illustration: SCENE FROM THE SECOND ACT OF "ANTIGONE"] Again, the utter absence of conventional scenery was a benefit rather than a disadvantage. When _Creon_ entered upon the upper plane, attended by his gorgeous guard, and at the same moment the entrance of the chorus filled the lower plane with colour less brilliant but not less strong, the stage was full, not of things, but of people, and was wholly alive. The eye was not distracted by painted scenery--in the ordinary theatre a mechanical necessity, and partly excusable because it also supplies warmth and richness of tone--but was entirely at the service of the mind in following the dramatic action of the play. The setting being a reality, there was no need for mechanism to conceal a seamy side; and the colour-effects were produced by the actors themselves: whose draperies made a superb colour-scheme of strong hues perfectly harmonized, of gleaming white, of glittering golden embroideries--which constantly was rearranged by the shifting of the groups and single figures into fresh combinations; to which every puff of wind and every gesture gave fresh effects of light and shade; and over which the golden light shed always its warm radiance.