ear flowing petticoats in the ballet of _Herodiade_. The matter stirred
Paris prodigiously.

With us, of course, the ballet has ceased to be of importance. In
Mademoiselle Genee we had a dancer as well entitled to immortality as
those about whom our fathers raved, and Russian dancers of brilliance
have appeared, but opera and the legitimate theatre pay no attention to
ballet except at pantomime season; and whilst probably the average keen
playgoer of Paris is acquainted with the names of the orthodox steps,
and is aware that in the ballet one begins as _petit rat_, then becomes
a quadrille ballerina, develops into a coryphee, blossoms into a minor
subject, grows into a subject, and eventually emerges and reaches the
stars as a prima ballerina, few of us know anything about the subject.

The whole fight in Paris raged round the question whether, regardless of
period or nation or style of music, the prima ballerina is entitled to
wear the scanty parasol skirt and petticoats in which she delights. The
ladies of the ballet, with modern tradition on their side, resent any
alteration in costume. The matter is not one of propriety in the
ordinary sense of the word; the propriety of ballet costumes is out of
the range of rational discussion. No one can doubt that if we had never
seen anything but ordinary society drama and a ballet were launched at
us in customary costume the police courts would take up the matter.

It is even known that there was a time (not Sir Henry's) when the Lord
Chamberlain interfered at the Lyceum and was defeated by ridicule.
Custom has settled the question of propriety, and it may be confidently
asserted that it never occurs to the mind of the prima ballerina that
any human being could regard her costume as indelicate. The trouble in
Paris was that, despite the wish of the other persons concerned in the
ballet, the star insisted upon proving lavishly to the public that she
did not resemble the traditional Queen of Spain. She went further: she
demanded her pound of flesh--or padding--she wished to exhibit what in
technical slang is called _le tutu_, a term descriptive of the
abbreviated costume and possessed also of a secondary meaning, which may
be imagined by taking the ordinary tourist's pronunciation of the words
and translating it. Trilby's "the altogether" in connexion with tights
explains the matter.

The question is one of art, and here lies its humour. It is not physical
vanity on the part