in colour had for its under-note a
mellow splendour of golden tones.

IX

In this perfect poetic setting the play went on with a stately
slowness--that yet was all too fast for the onlookers--and with the
perfection of finish that such actors naturally gave to their work
amidst surroundings by which they were at once stimulated and inspired.
Even the practical defects of the ruinous theatre were turned into
poetical advantages which made the tragic action still more real. The
woeful entrance of _Oedipus_ and the despairing retreat of _Jocasta_
were rendered the more impressive by momentary pauses in the broken
doorway--that emphasized by its wreck their own wrecked happiness; in
"Antigone" a touching beauty was given to the entry of the blind
_Tiresias_ by his slow approach from the distant side of the theatre,
led by a child through the maze of bushes and around the fallen
fragments of stone; and Mademoiselle Bartet (_Antigone_), unable to pass
by the door that should have been but was not open for her, made a still
finer exit by descending the steps at the side of the stage and
disappearing among the trees.

But the most perfect of those artistic utilizations of chance
accessories--which were the more effective precisely because they were
accidental, and the more appreciated because their use so obviously was
an inspiration--was the final exit of _Oedipus_: a departure "into
desert regions" that Mounet-Sully was able to make very literally real.

Over in the corner beside the "garden" exit, as I have said, was a
tangled growth of figs and pomegranates; and thence extending almost to
the stage was a light fringe of bushes growing along the base of the
rear wall among the fragments of fallen stone. It was through that
actual wilderness that _Oedipus_--crossing half the width of the
theatre--passed from the brilliant stage into shadow that grew deeper as
he advanced, and at last, entering the gap in the stone-work where once
the doorway had been, disappeared into the dark depth beyond.

An accident of the moment--the exhaustion of the carbons of the electric
lamps--gave to his exit a still keener dramatic intensity. The
footlights alone remained burning: flooding with a golden splendour the
stage and the great yellow wall, and from the wall reflected upward and
outward upon the auditorium; casting over the faces in the orchestra a
soft golden twilight, and a still fainter golden light over the more
remote hill-s