In "Il Fuoco" we get the same ethics, philosophy, æsthetics, and glorification of sensuousness that we get in all his other books. Here the two leading characters are exact replicas of himself and of the world's greatest actress of her day portrayed in an environment, Venice, that is redolent of beauty in decay, like a cracked Grecian vase overfilled with withered rose leaves which fall from it at every puff of wind. This environment makes an ideal palette upon which he blends the colors whose pigments he has been selecting and experimenting with for a quarter of a century. The publication of it promoted his voluntary exile from Italy. His fellow countrymen could not condone the monstrous offense of depicting therein as the pliant mediator of his perverted sensuousness their beloved actress. And they have not yet forgiven him, nor are they likely to forgive him. After D'Annunzio had established a reputation as a neoromanticist with a classical tendency he turned to drama, and the year 1897 marked his advent into that field. His first efforts, three one-act parables--"The Foolish Virgins and the Wise Virgins," "The Rich Man and Poor Lazarus," and "The Prodigal Son"--were published in the _Mattino_ of Naples, a newspaper controlled by the husband of his friend and fellow writer, Matilde Serao. They are noteworthy merely to show the way in which a sensuous pagan can transform simple characters into decadent, perverted proselyters of pleasure. It was not until he wrote "The Dream of a Spring Morning" and "The Dream of an Autumn Sunset" that he displayed the same measure of lascivious imagery and capacity for description of the perverse manifestations of eroticism that he revealed in his romances. These were revealed in lines that truly may be said to be masterpieces of lyric beauty, and when the Mad Woman of the first and the Messalina of the second were interpreted by Eleanora Duse the musical sound of the words and the emotional force of the sentiment gained a quality of importance and grandeur which enhanced their inherent qualities. In "La Città Morta," his most successful drama, he returned to his favorite topic, incest. Though his purpose in writing it, the most successful of all his dramas, was to revive in form, structure, and unity the Greek drama, it gave him an opportunity to display his knowledge of the classics and archæology. The philosophy and mysticism of the play he got from Maeterlinck. Its theme is lust and crime. Lust is portrayed in almost every conceivable form of perversion, in poetic thoughts and graceful diction, especially in the delineation of Leonardo, the explorer, who lusts for his sister. The dreamy, meditative languor of the dramatis personæ, their insensitiveness to every form of ethical conformation, their perversion of every form of moral relationship, constitute an atmosphere that the northerner does not breath pleasurably. It was thoroughly purged before it was put on the boards in this country.