nd when the poet Frederic Mistral
entered--tall, stately, magnificent--there broke forth a storm of
cheering that was not stilled until the minister (rather taken aback, I
fancy, by so warm an outburst of enthusiasm) satisfied the subjects of
this uncrowned king by giving him a place of honour in the ministerial
box.

And then, suddenly, the shouting ceased, the confusion was quelled, a
hush fell upon the multitude, as that single figure in white swept with
fluttering draperies across from the rear to the front of the stage,
and paused for a moment before she began her invocation to the Grecian
goddess: whose altar-fires went out in ancient ages, but who was a
living and a glorious reality when the building in which was this echo
of her worship came new from the hands of its creators--seventeen
hundred years ago. The mistral, just then blowing strongly and steadily,
drew down upon the stage and swept back the singer's Grecian draperies
in entrancing folds. As she sang, standing in the golden light against
the golden background, her supple body was swayed forward eagerly,
impetuously; above her head were raised her beautiful bare arms; from
her shoulders the loose folds of her mantle floated backward,
wing-like--and before us, in the flesh, as in the flesh it was of old
before the Grecian sculptors, was the motive of those nobly impulsive,
urgent statues of which the immortal type is the Winged Victory.

The theory has been advanced that the great size of the Greek stage, and
of the palace in its rear which was its permanent set of scenery, so
dwarfed the figures of the actors that buskins and padding were used in
order to make the persons of the players more in keeping with their
surroundings. With submission, I hold that this theory is arrant
nonsense. Even on stilts ten feet high the actors still would have been,
in one way, out of proportion with the background. If used at all in
tragedy, buskins and pads probably were used to make the heroic
characters of the drama literally greater than the other characters.

In point of fact, the majestic height of the scene did not dwarf the
human figures sustaining serious parts. The effect was precisely the
contrary. Mademoiselle Breval, standing solitary in that great open
space, with the play of golden light upon her, became also heroic. With
the characters in "Oedipus" and "Antigone" the result was the same: the
sombre grandeur of the tragedies was enlarged by the majesty