The action of the ballet takes place in a rock-girt shrine—a mosaic-patterned platform shut in by high cliffs of tawny orange hue, from excrescences of which, in lazy festoons, hang monstrous serpents. In the middle, at the back, is a pool in which the sacred lotus is supposed to float; a giant tortoise, with gaudily painted carapace, leans over its rim in act of drinking. Massive gates to the left bar the entrance to the shrine which a deep fissure in the cliffs makes possible: a cleft through which the deep blue of the Indian sky is visible.
Round the sacred precinct is seated, immobile and patient, a throng of worshippers. There are shortly to be enacted over a young neophyte the rites of initiation into the priesthood, and with the opening bars of the music there enters a long procession of priests, attendants and others who are to take part in the ceremony. There are men bearing sacrificial fruits aloft in baskets, others bringing jugs and bowls and salvers for the lustral water, which is presently poured out by the high priest before the lotus pool. Then enters a bevy of girls whose sequence of postures, performed with deliberate care, constitute a ceremony of obeisance to the tutelary spirit of the place. The high priest in turn performs a rite of adoration, his tall figure the centre of a group of strangely posing girls. To these groups are added yet others—girls who lead forward kids for the sacrifice, more priests, and a great number of worshippers who crowd in through the opened gates and stand watchful upon the fringe of the glowing, many-coloured assemblage that is grouped about the lotus pool and awaits the high priest’s bidding.
The sacrificial fire is lit, the neophyte is conducted to his place. While the initiation rites proceed a dance is performed by three girls carrying on their arms peacocks, whose gorgeous trains of eyed feathers sweep gracefully from the shoulders of the swiftly moving bearers to the ground. They are followed by another group of girls, whose dancing and posturing ends with a general prostration of bodies as the neophyte, now robed in the garments of his new vocation, is paraded before the circle of approving onlookers.
As he thus submits himself to public scrutiny, the novice offers to all and sundry a bowl, to the contents of which those help themselves who list. The young man walks with abstracted gaze, composing his mind to receive that ecstasy which befits the high solemnity of the occasion. All, save one, regard him with silent indifference. That one is a girl, whose suppressed excitement betrays her to a warning movement as the neophyte approaches. As he reaches the spot where she is seated she leans quickly forward and looks him eagerly in the face. Entreaty is expressed in every line of her figure.
The young man meets that passionate look, and halts abashed. Memories which he thought to have put behind him for ever surge rebelliously into his mind. He hesitates; but with an effort masters his emotion, and hastily returns to his appointed place before the high priest. The incident, occupying but a moment, has passed unnoticed by those around, and as the girl sinks back in an agony of frustrated hope, a number of half-demented devotees resume the rites with a wild dance of frenzied lamentation. As this orgy of self-intoxication swells to a climax, the sacrificial kids are made ready for slaughter. The final moment of dedication is at hand.
Once more the neophyte, led this time by the high priest in person, is paraded before the seated watchers: once more he is obliged to pass the girl who embodies all that life has held for him in the past, before ambition and the lust of sacerdotal power turned him from love and joy. She alone might have the key, perchance, to unlock the door he has so resolutely shut. She has the key, and with a courage born of desperate abandon to love and passion she dares to use it. She breaks from her place, and fiercely casts herself at her whilom lover’s feet. She grovels in abasement, she implores—then, snatching a hope from the indecision which she sees written on his face, she cajoles.
The priests, angry and scandalised at this sacrilegious irruption, seize her and carry her off. But she eludes them, and ere the
