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Show BETRAYED DUSE'S SECRET. Gabriele D'Annunzio, the author of "The Triumph of Death," has just proved himself in cold type to be as heartless a scoundrel as ever lived. He has published the story of Eleo-nora Eleo-nora Duse's life, revealed to him by the great Italian tragedienne when they were generally thought to be affianced lovers. He has transcribed with lit eral accuracy the confidences which she poured into Ills' ears the story of her early shame and miseries. After securing her story he deserted her. He makes her say: "Ah, Stelio! those were sorrowful days and nights, full of anxiety and of shame produced by enforced en-forced self-abasement." This work of d'Annunzio is the ex-tremest ex-tremest expression of degeneracy and decadency in literature. The title of it is "Fuoco," meaning "Fire," and d'Annunzio himself is its central figure, an egotistical, vainglorious vainglor-ious personage for whose love two women alternately coo and fight. One of them is Duse, the other, the successful success-ful one, her younger rival, who has Duse, heretofore the enigma of the dramatic dra-matic work!, lifts the veil from her past, so full of misery and tragedy, of disappointments and heartrending sorrows. sor-rows. She tells the man she loves all the secrets of her life which, until then, she had guarded so persistently. And the one person of nil whom she trusted has written a book about her experiences and sold it to the highest bidder. "The like of it never happened in the whole history of Italian literature," litera-ture," says the Naples Tribuna. |