He can but give an incomplete expression to the incomplete emotions with which his puppet’s breast is charged. The result is ludicrous, a mere fiasco. Where Pétrouchka thought to excite admiration he arouses only contempt; he repels where he hoped to attract. The object of his passion, startled at first, but soon disgusted, retires in dudgeon, and as the hapless lover throws himself forward in a despairing effort to detain her the door is slammed to in his face. The curtain, descending, hides his pitiful fumbling as he tries the door anew. * * * * * At the other end of the puppet-box, as we see when the curtain next rises, lives the Blackamoor. A more expensive puppet than Pétrouchka, despite less sensibility to the showman’s magic arts, the Blackamoor’s apartment has some pretensions to comfort. A wall-paper of violent hue and florid design (everyone who has played with a doll’s house will recognise it) serves as background to the oriental divan on which the Blackamoor reclines in luxurious ease. Indolent and stupid, the rival of Pétrouchka is happier than he. Less responsive to the showman’s baneful influence, the swarthy doll has been invested with but little more than the lowest of human appetites and instincts. No dim perceptions of romance are his; his brutish wits have not been sharpened, like Pétrouchka’s, to the point of suffering. Lolling in his gaudy chamber, he passes the time in idleness and folly. We see him, as the curtain rises, intent upon some clownish trifling with a coconut. Prone upon his back, with legs in air, he shows a doltish pleasure in juggling his toy with hands and knees. Presently tiring of this, his vacuous mind casts round for fresh amusement. A happy thought strikes him, and flinging himself off the divan he rolls over and over across the floor, clutching the precious nut, till suddenly he finds himself, with idiot leer, in sitting posture. He begins anew his juggling, but the silly game has lost its savour. He drops the coconut upon the floor and stupidly blames his clumsiness upon the toy. Angrily regarding it, he flies into a rage, and fetching his sabre, slashes furiously at the object of his wrath. Failing to hit it, he next finds fault with his weapon, and flings it pettishly into a corner. The coconut still lies at his feet, and a superstitious notion creeps into his turbid brain. Retiring a few paces, he prostrates himself before this fetish that has defied his wrath and violence.