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
Pierrot The Naturalists—Émile Zola especially, who wrote glowingly of them—were captivated by their art. Edmond de Goncourt modeled his acrobat-mimes in his "The Zemganno Brothers" (1879) upon them; J.-K. Huysmans (whose "Against Nature" [1884] would become Dorian Gray's bible) and his friend Léon Hennique wrote their pantomime "" (1881) after seeing them perform at the Folies Bergère. (And, in turn, Jules Laforgue wrote his pantomime "Pierrot the Cut-Up" ["Pierrot fumiste", 1882] after reading the scenario by Huysmans and Hennique.) It was in part through the enthusiasm that they excited, coupled with the Impressionists’ taste for popular entertainment, like the circus and