were beflagged and illuminated and carried the limelight, and between and behind them was gathered a densely packed audience of forty or fifty thousand people.  The play began at sundown, while the sky was still red away to the right and the palaces on the far bank to the left still aglow with the setting sun, and it continued under the magic of the darkening sky.  At first the beauty and grandeur of the setting drew the attention away from the performers, but gradually one became aware that on the platform before the columns kings and queens and courtiers in sumptuous conventional robes, and attended by soldiers, were conversing in dumb show with one another.  A few climbed the steps of a small wooden platform that was set up in the middle, and one indicated by a lifted hand that here should be built a monument to the power of capitalism over the earth.  All gave signs of delight.  Sentimental music was heard, and the gay company fell to waltzing away the hours.  Meanwhile, from below on the road level, there streamed out of the darkness on either side of the building and up the half-lit steps, their fetters ringing in harmony with the music, the enslaved and toiling masses coming in response to command to build the monument for their masters.  It is impossible to describe the exquisite beauty of the slow movement of those dark figures aslant the broad flight of steps; individual expressions were of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre.  Some groups carried hammer and anvil, and others staggered under enormous blocks of stone.  Love for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of moving groups of actors in unison.  As I watched these processions climbing the steps in apparently careless and spontaneous fashion, and yet producing so graceful a result, I remembered the mad leap of the archers down the stage in Prince Igor, which is also apparently careless and spontaneous and full of wild and irregular beauty, yet never varies a hair-breadth from one performance to the next.

For a time the workers toiled in the shadow in their earthly world, and dancing continued in the lighted paradise of the rulers above, until presently, in sign that the monument was complete, a large yellow disc was hoisted amid acclamation above the highest platform between the columns.  But at the same moment a banner was uplifted amongst the people, and a small figure was seen gesticulating.  Angry fists were shaken and the banner and speaker disappeared, only to reappear almost immediately in another part of the dense crowd.  Again hostility, until finally among the French workers away up on the right, the first Communist manifesto found favour.  Rallying around their banner the communards ran shouting down the steps, gathering supporters as they came.  Above, all is confusion, kings and queens scuttling