Pierrot of Pierrot and Columbine". In the last year of the century, Pierrot appeared in a Russian ballet, "Harlequin's Millions" a.k.a. "Harlequinade" (1900), its libretto and choreography by Marius Petipa, its music by Riccardo Drigo, its dancers the members of St. Petersburg's Imperial Ballet. It would set the stage for the later and greater triumphs of Pierrot in the productions of the Ballets Russes. The Pierrot bequeathed to the twentieth century had acquired a rich and wide range of personae. He was the naïve butt of practical jokes and amorous scheming (Gautier); the prankish but innocent waif (Banville, Verlaine, Willette); the
Gilles (stock character) did Gilles "wear the same costume" as Pierrot, but both generally "had the same character" throughout the 18th century: Pierrot, like Gilles, "was a farcical creature, not a tragic or sensitive one". (Pierrot will become tearful and incipiently tragic only in the middle of the 19th century, in the hands of Paul Legrand.) "It is", writes Haskell, "hard to resist the conclusion that the consumptive Watteau has invested the figure of Gilles with some degree of self-identification, and Mrs. [Erwin] Panofsky has also pointed out that on many other occasions when painting Pierrot figures Watteau not only gave them a