His next play, "La Gioconda," is an exposition of the exemption which D'Annunzio thinks the artist of his own superman caliber should have from conforming to the laws of estate or custom. The contention is a simple one. He should do anything that he pleases--which means give himself over to the pleasure of the senses and the appetites until the indulgence is followed by satiety and thus his progress toward perfection through gratification of desires will be accomplished. After satiety comes disgust, and then a period of dementia, but this is merely the prelude to another fling of erotic fury in his conformation to the doctrine of purification through pleasure. The hero is a psychopathic individual, sensitive, aboulic, distractible, impressionable, impulsive, vacillating, and suicidal. He is married to a woman who apparently has every beauty of soul and body that a woman can have. But, alas, she is virtuous! She has not the key to the jewel-casket of his genius. That is possessed by his model Gioconda Dianti, the source of all his inspirations. One quiver of her eyelid causes his soul to dissolve like sugar in water, while two make him feel that he is lord of the universe. The tragedy of the play is the permanent mutilation of the wife's hands, the only somatic feature that has "appealed" to the artist. She attempts to save his masterpiece which the model pushes over in temper on being told falsely that she is to be banished. Her mutilated hands serve to remind her the rest of her life that virtue is its own reward. The two dramas of D'Annunzio which are best known to the English-speaking public are "La Figlia d'Jorio" and "Francesca di Rimini." "The Daughter of Jorio" is a tragedy laid in the mountains of Abruzzi. D'Annunzio knows the customs, habits, and traditions of the shepherds and mountaineers, their superstitions and emotions, as he knows art, archæology, and eroticism. The first act is a description of the betrothal of the son of a brutal shepherd to a simple girl with whom he is not particularly in love. At the ceremony of betrothal the daughter of Jorio, who is suspected to have evil powers, claims protection from certain shepherds who had designs upon her. The first impulse of the joyous party was to cast her out, but when the betrothed young man was about to do so he saw behind her his lustful desire presented to his eyes in the guise of an angel, which made him hesitate, and the daughter of Jorio was allowed to remain. In the next act he is seen as her lover. He quarrels about her with his father and kills him. The parricide's punishment is to be sewed into a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, and a monkey and cast into the sea. The daughter of Jorio comes to the rescue and convinces the people that she is the real criminal. Eros is unconquerable.