Category: Novels
=Pall Mall Gazette.=--'A masterpiece. The story holds and haunts one. Unequalled even by the great French contemporary whom, in his realism, D’Annunzio most resembles, is the account of the pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin by the sick, deformed, and afflicted. It is a gr...
=Pall Mall Gazette.=--'A masterpiece. The story holds and haunts one. Unequalled even by the great French contemporary whom, in his realism, D’Annunzio most resembles, is the ac...
2. Part 2After the inevitable tumult of early youth had been controlled, the vehemence of conflicting desires defeated, and a barrier raised against the confused and multifold overflow o...
3. Part 3“What pillar of fire, what burning desert, what lonely mountain top, what bottomless cave, what malarious pool, what solitary, barren, or tragic spot can be surpassed by this pl...
4. Part 4Where and by what chance did Alessandro first meet with the Florentine master, who was at that time attaining the supreme splendour of his manhood? Perhaps at one of Ludovico’s...
5. Part 5The tone of his voice struck me more than his words. His tones, gestures, looks, and all his actions had a singular intensity, like those of a man stricken by a mysterious disea...
6. Part 6And he led me up a path enclosed within walls of box-wood, feeble with age, and broken here and there by deep gaps, from which a fresh scent of invisible violets seemed to issue...
7. Part 7And she put her finger through the ring in the middle of the disc, and tried to lift its weight; but she could not, and rose up with her face scarlet from the exertion. I came t...
8. Part 8“Violante was with us at Gaeta,” he added, turning to me. “She was scarcely five years old, and was a great pet of the queen’s. The others had started for Civita Vecchia on the...
9. Part 9The clearness of the early spring afternoon paled before that illuminating vision of the autumn purple as we went down the steps, where a few hours before the three princesses h...
10. Part 10“The book I had with me this morning,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice as if she were revealing some intimate confidence, “was a volume of her letters.”
11. Part 11“Here is a miracle for which you ought to thank Heaven. Think of the thousand legends contained in the silver network of this blossom, of the hidden relation between the number...
12. Part 12“How astonished I was,” she added, “when you repeated St. Catherine’s exhortation to me that day! I was still full of her spirit, and you were magician enough to speak to me of...
13. Part 13“It is not for him alone that fate is dark. The twilight of kings is ashy, blinded of all glory. Look even beyond the Latin countries. Under the shadow of artificial thrones you...
14. Part 14“Alessandro and Hercules! These were the two purple flowers so early cut off, which Leonardo and Ludovico gathered up and transmuted into imperishable essences. Andrea Cantelmo...
15. Part 15The ruins of Linturno lay beneath us in the valley like a heap of white stones, like a strip of dry shore, in the midst of the sweet dead waters, where only yesterday by a doubl...
16. Part 16Amazed, I looked down at the Tartarean lake, thick and stagnant like the blind eye of a subterranean world; and I looked at the greedy crater where the impetus of the primeval f...