you can partly realize from the loathing which a dancer causes you, even if an Elssler or a Taglioni, when she having just finished a dance, stands on her left foot, and grins at the public.”
“That is beside the question,” Verbrugge said; “for it is absolutely ugly.”
“That is just my opinion; but she fancies it beautiful, and as a climax to all the previous performance, in which much beauty may have been displayed. She regards it; as the point, of the epigram as the ‘aux armes!’ of the Marseillaise which she sang with her feet; or as the murmuring of the willows on the grave of the love represented in the dance. And that spectators, who generally, like us, found their taste more or less on custom and imitation, think that moment to be the most striking is evident, because just then every one explodes in applause, as if they said, ‘All the former was beautiful, but now we cannot refrain from giving vent to our feelings of admiration’ You said that these pauses were absolutely ugly, so do I; but what is the reason? It is because motion was at an end, and with that the history which the dancer told. Believe me, stagnation is death.”
“But,” interrupted Duclari, “you also rejected as an exponent of beauty, the cataracts. . . yet they move. . .”
“Yes, but without a history. They move; but do not change their place. They move like a rocking-horse,
