Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/270

264 One evening, in the cloister scene by moonlight, in the convent, I observed that the white bonnet of my companion had a pink tint: so also had the paper of our books and every white object around us.

This contrast of colour suggested to me the direct use of coloured lights. The progress of science in producing intense lights by the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and by electricity under its various forms, enabled me to carry out the idea of producing coloured lights for theatrical representations. I made many experiments by filling cells formed by pieces of parallel plate glass with solutions of various salts of chrome of copper, and of other substances.

The effects were superb. I then devised a dance, in which they might be splendidly exhibited. This was called the rainbow dance. I proposed to abolish the foot-lights, and instead of them to substitute four urns with flowers. These urns would each conceal from the audience an intense light of one of the following colours: blue, yellow, red, or any others which might be preferable.

The rays of light would be projected from the vases towards the stage, and would form four cones of red, blue, yellow, and purple light passing to its further end.

Four groups, each of fifteen danseuses in pure white, would now enter on the stage. Each group would assume the colour of the light in which it was placed. Thus four dances each of a different colour would commence. Occasionally, a damsel from a group of one colour would spring into another group, thus resembling a shooting star.

After a time, the coloured lights would expand laterally and overlap each other, thus producing all the colours of the rainbow. In the mean time the sixty damsels in pure white forming one vast ellipse, would dance round, each in turn