Averting his eyes, the stricken Schariar staggers from the fatal spot. In silence, his foot upon the golden corselet of the slave, Schah-Zeman lets him go. [Illustration: Le Spectre de la Rose] LE SPECTRE DE LA ROSE. FROM A POEM BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER, ADAPTED BY J. L. VAUDOYER. MUSIC BY WEBER, ORCHESTRATED BY BERLIOZ. SCENES AND DANCES BY MICHEL FOKINE. SCENERY AND COSTUMES DESIGNED BY LÉON BAKST. Nothing is more eloquent of the Russians’ art than the distinction they are able to give to a theme which, less sensitively treated, would be merely commonplace, if not banal. In no ballet is this refining instinct more delicately employed than in “Le Spectre de la Rose,” which Nijinsky and Karsavina dance to the familiar strains of “L’ Invitation à la Valse.” It might not be just to call Weber’s music commonplace; but sentimental it certainly is, and with such a “plot” (if an incident so slight can thus be termed) as the Russians, inspired by a dainty poem of Théophile Gautier, have devised for the music’s accompaniment, the faintest excess would have turned it sugary--and sickly. In the nice restraint which they display, the two artists vie with each other--Karsavina as a picture of youth and innocence, of unsophisticated sentiment: Nijinsky as a phantom, conveying the suggestion of being verily the mere figment of a dream, without recourse to that note of the bizarre by which one of less subtle perceptions might seek to insinuate a spectral character. To the restraint of the dancers is added that of Léon Bakst, whose setting for this sentimental idyll has that simplicity which the situation requires. It is a quaint, almost queer, little bedroom which is disclosed after the opening bars have been played by the orchestra--an apartment daintily decked, and arranged with a kind of prim formality as engaging as the crinoline and flounces of Victorian girlhood: a completely unsophisticated chamber, in short. Long windows, open to the summer night, show a garden beyond, flooded with romantic moonshine, and at one of these stands a young girl, loth to break the reverie in which her thoughts are held. Her backward glance drinks in the beauty of the night, her pulses more than faintly stirred by the glamour of the dance so lately ended, her whole self thrilling to a potent magic but half understood.