The palace of the Corporation of Canton has a niche for its golden god,--an inner hall where great seats, placed solemnly about the center, indicate rather than invite repose. And, as European clubs would place a library, they have established a theater, with parade and pomp, on the far side of the court which is in front of the whole building. It is a terrace of stone deep in between two buildings. Consisting only of a difference in level, the stage between the wings and the crowd is simply a wide, flat space above their heads. A square canopy like that of a dais shades and consecrates it. Another portico in the foreground, framing it in four pillars of granite, confers on it solemnity and distance. Here comedy develops, legends are told, the vision of the things which are to be reveals itself in rolling thunder. The curtain, comparable to that veil which divides us from the world of dreams, does not exist here. But as if each soul, in discarding its disguises, were held in an impenetrable tissue, whose colors and elusive brightness are like the livery of night; each actor in his silken draperies shows nothing of himself but the movement when he stirs. Beneath the plumage of his part the golden headdress, the face hidden under rouge and mask, he is no more than a gesture and a voice. The emperor mourns over his lost kingdom, the unjustly accused princess flees from monsters and savages, armies defile, combats take place, a gesture effaces years and distances, debates proceed before the elders, the gods descend, the genie arises from the jar. But never does any one of the persons engaged in the execution of a chant or of a complicated dance deviate from the rhythm and the harmonies which time the measure and rule the evolutions, any more than he would throw off his clothes.