The fact, however, is, his characters speak a language which, far from being absurd, as it was at first thought to be by many of his readers, is instinct with life and quite true to life--to life, that is, as made articulate in the intense privacy of dreams, or hallucinations, or moments of excessive emotional perturbation. The other principal requisite for the attainment of the inner dramatic vitalness in drama is a pervasive atmospheric mood, a sustained _Stimmung_. This, in the case of Maeterlinck, is brought about by the combined employment of familiar and original artistic devices. The grave and melancholy mood that so deeply impregnates the work of Maeterlinck is tinged in the earlier stage, as has been pointed out, with the sombre coloring of fatalism. In the first few books, in particular, there hovers a brooding sense of terror and an undefinable feeling of desolation. Through _Serres Chaudes_ ("Hot Houses"), his first published book, (1889), there runs a tenor of weariness, of ideal yearnings overshadowed by the hopelessness of circumstances. Even in this collection of poems, where so much less necessity exists for a unity of mood than in the plays, Maeterlinck's predilection for scenic effects suggestive of weirdness and superstitious fear became apparent in the recurrent choice of sombre scenic motifs: oppressive nocturnal silence,--a stagnant sheet of water,--moonlight filtered through green windows, etc. The diction, too, through the incessant use of terms like _morne_, _las_, _pâle_, _désire_, _ennui_, _tiède_, _indolent_, _malade_, exhales as it were a lazy resignation. Temporarily, then, the fatalistic strain is uppermost both in the philosophy and the poetry of the rising young author; and to make matters worse, his is the fatalism of pessimistic despair: Fate is forsworn against man. The objective point of life is death. We constantly receive warnings from within, but the voices are not unequivocal and emphatic enough to save us from ourselves.