A favorite ballet of the Diaghileff company is _Cléopatre_, arranged by Fokine to music by Arensky, Taneieff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Glinka, Glazounoff, and Moussorgsky. The chief characters of this ballet are Seraphime Astafieva, as Cleopatra, Sophie Feodorova, as Ta-Hor, Vera Fokina, as a Greek woman, and Nijinsky, as the favorite of Cleopatra. It has been declared the most popular of all Fokine’s ballets. It describes the well-known love drama of the great Egyptian queen. The first scene is laid on the shores of the Nile. There is just visible the arch of an ancient temple and its entrance with great figures of stone. The ground on which it stands is flanked by pillars which tower towards the sky. The waters of the river gleam between these pillars. The sun is sinking into the hot desert. The first character of the dance is Ta-Hor, a priestess; the second Amoun, a warrior, her beloved. She emerges through the dark curtain of the night and meets him in the silent precincts of the temple. Music quivers from hands and feet, lips and eyes. We feel an impending danger. The silence is broken with the sudden appearance of the High Priest. Cleopatra is coming. But Ta-Hor clings to the lips of Amoun. When the Queen appears the lovers shrink back into the shadows of the temple. She is a voluptuous beauty. We see her resting, her limbs tangled in a mass of color, her eyes fixed like serpent’s, staring into the hot night of the desert while she waits for what it will bring her. She is tired of the wealth the world has poured at her feet. There is but one thing that never tires her and is ever new. Her subtle limbs uncurl from the tangled colors, open like a rose at a breath of warm wind--to close again with a little shiver of ecstasy. Love is always new and beautiful. Of love she has never tired, only of lovers.