The enormous canvas on which was depicted the bottom of the sea was lowered. The decorator retreated a few steps and once more looked lovingly at the “sea bottom.” This was his latest creation.
“Listen, Pavel!” he shouted, “when the mermaids begin to swim, you will let Julia come first and lower than all the rest; let her down to the very bottom!”
“It shall be done!”
At last everything was ready for the mermaids to swim through the bottom of the sea. Kostovsky was already on the elevation, with the electric reflector turned on the stage; he himself had to manage the lighting up of the scenery and the actors. The “Bottom of the Sea” became suffused with a tender, poetic light. This greenish-silvery light seemed to penetrate the water as if with the bright sunlit day above. And here at the bottom everything lived, knowing no light. In the distance stood a coral-reef, and everywhere half-alive vegetation greedily stretched its branches over the water, and all around floated slimy medusæ.
Underneath, the first thing to meet the eye was the yawning mouth of a submarine cave, from which were thrust out the arms of a hideous, enormous devil-fish that, without moving, glared out of its two green eyes.
And from amid this primitive, abnormal world appeared a wonderfully beautiful woman with flowing hair and bare shoulders, with the form of a fish below the waist, covered with shining, silvery scales. The loveliness of her head and the beauty of her shoulders was enhanced by the ugliness of the submarine world.
She swam like a fish, easily and gracefully, turning and twisting, her scales sparkling and glittering; she was followed by another mermaid, a whole school.
Lighted by the rays of the reflector, at the will of Kostovsky, they became marvelous, fairy-like beauties.
But they were all eclipsed by one. She swam lower than all, and was distinguished from all by the radiance of her beauty. She was lighted better and more alluringly than the rest, the tenderest rays of the reflector warmly and lovingly fell upon her, ran after her, and lovingly caressed her graceful body, adding a seductive expression to her face and making her eyes shine like stars. She seemed to be created of light, and this light changed with every moment, and she changed with it, garbed in thousands of different tints. A veritable queen of the deep. She felt that the enchanter decorator had bestowed on her a marvelous loveliness, that the delighted public was ready to break forth into a storm of applause in honor of this beauty, and, swimming close to the decorator, she gratefully waved her sparkling fish-tail, over which, by the will of the generous, enamored decorator, suddenly fell a shower of many-colored diamonds.
She swam behind the scenes, and he, rising on tiptoe and smiling happily, sent her an airy kiss from behind the reflector.