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Show H JFgs Italy's Famous Poet and Lover j I Hurled Out of a Milan I -sy .V , L .." .P BtifiC not many weeks ago wss at dinner. At that nth lights twinkling and ftiTibJc moon bath;ng every- Bnry splendor, it was more korld's wonder city. Kroosis inside the hotel? and Hu ell as all tho?e pictur-reatir.R pictur-reatir.R places that line lets were thronged with gay tobful romen From one Mr to the other the balmy air tfi-'k and lautrhte -. P" ny of the other gar- V1 M the one outside a some distance from HJSpart. It is a place un-W un-W Miual tourist, but one V those wh, have dipped m- of Milan's interesting j'BMll hoW.lt is fash-Buf- the renl -eason f ,c ftch high esteem by , 'Station for being a H' hEJf 1 convenient veil of a;!f '" 'la " maiiai-e i with the authori-middle authori-middle name is dis- at its tables manv j Preferred this Bo- Mifir lamouj and C;whMe mount-'mr mount-'mr hopes have Mfrfoccmean;orr. QLwth fe tinthr trnck9- LtToot , alarm-and RttiY,n to Rtistrck thc fi!5ptf an'J crumpled Cd6:1 Poftt 1 scrrned ned KhW' iv:- face CouM not con- ceal the identity of the injured man. It was Gabrie'e d'Annunzio who lay there, crushed and bleeding d'Annunzio, d'Annun-zio, Italy's greatest poet and dramatist, the hero of Fiume and of more fiery love adventures than could possibly bo printed ! The polics were called, an ambulance came clanging to the scene and thc apparently ap-parently dying poet was rushed to the nearest hospital. The diagnosis showed concussion of the brain, a slightly cracked skull, probably serious internal injuries. Little hope wns held out for his recovery. In the mean time back at the hotel where this shocking accident to Italy's hero had occurred earnest effort was being mado to discover the cause of it. Tho landlord and his employees had no better explanation to offer than any one else. "The signor came to tho hotel early this afternoon," ea id the landlord, with many gesticulations and nhrugs of his plump shoulders. "With him was a lady a most charming one, but rather sad, I thought I myself showed them to tho best suite in the house, in the front, up two flights. Of what happened after they entered there I know no more than you, but I will soon find out." And with that he went upstairs and knocked on the door of the suite from which d'Annunzio had made his tragic exit There was no response. Fearing that the locked room held another tragedy, trag-edy, he summoned a gendarme and tho two burst open the door. Tho gas jets were burning. Except for tho shattered glass in the window through whirh the poet had plunged, the rooms were in perfect order. There was no Bign of a struggle. But the "charming, rather sad woman" who had entered tho suite with d'Annunzio d'An-nunzio n few hours before was nowhere to bo found. The only dew she had loft wan a glove, lying forlornly on the. dress-. ing table. It bore the trademark of a fas-hionable Paris dealer. The doorman thought d'Annunzio'a missing companion might have been the woman who left tho hotel a minute or bo after the body struck the pavement. But he could not be certain, for she was heavily veiled. She stood for a second in thc doorway, he said, looking toward where the body lay; then, as if wishing to avoid the crowd that was gathering around it, she walked hurriedly away through a gate opening on a side street. And then Milan began to gossip ns it ft On thc left and : ; v Ida ' y v -' Rubinstein, I the beautiful u dancer, who jtj ; survived her i ) '"' unhappy love seldom has before While fjzW:: ':4 f :- ! affair with $ I 'A unu.Tiio'f recovery was jft V-- . d'Annunzio still in doubt all sorts of better Liuin i wild rumors came into be- jE9RlPvJ?VT i many other i n:g to epl?tn his foil from iM . ; v v ct.ms of his j the hotel window. V" C'- peculiar fas- Eleonora Duse, the preat R-'Mi' . cinetions actress and former sweet- &ik: v- . . 5 11 heart of the poet, was men- r' ' fioneH. Ho was he- im rne . l Site successor in his kaleido- scopic affoctions, Ida Rubinstein, Rubin-stein, the dancer. Nor did the gossips gos-sips overlook his former wife, the Marchesa Maria di Gallese. And also they frequently mentioned his latest wife, the pretty pianiste, Luisa Baccara. While the gossip was raging d'Annunzio d'Annun-zio amazed the physicians by regaining consciousness and giving every promise of cheating death. But ho refused to give the slightest explanation as to how his misadventure had come about. As soon as ho was able to talk he demanded de-manded that the Prefect of Police be sent for. That worthy hurried to the hospital, expecting to hear a confession of somo sort. But he was disappointed. D'Annunzio mado no confession. Instead, In-stead, he demanded that the entire affair af-fair be hushed up, that no attempt bo made to investigate :t and that the authorities au-thorities tako no action whatsoever in regard to his accident. Of course, d'Annunr.io's word was law. Tho veiled woman whose shriek la believed be-lieved to have preceded d'Annunzio's plunge from tho third-story window has never been identified. There are surmises sur-mises and guesses as to her Identity, but no one save the poet really knows who of his numerous wives and sweethearts or what avenging agent of one of them pushed him out of that window. That he was pushed with great force through. the glass seems certain from tho force with which his body struck the pavement and tho angle it took in ita llifht through the air. If he had acci-( acci-( ntally fallen from the window or deliberately delib-erately jumned as a man intending Bui-.-idc would have done he would have landed in the restaurant garden directly below, and not in the street outside, yards away from the hotel. Alter several painful weeks, d'Annun-tio d'Annun-tio was finally able to leave tho hospital. His physicians told him that his life depended de-pended upon his abstaining from till Ht-erary Ht-erary or other work for at least two years. nd then the poet added a new note of m3atery to this already puzzling chapter chap-ter In his lif-' by affiliating himself with B monastic order as a lay brother. Is hu entering upon a rigidly religious life In order to give thanks for the miraculous miracu-lous healing of his broken head? Ot is because he ? ' '. . 'V.Ar' feels he must do penance for his , mt.s perhaps for J .-oiii.- unici gi-itable sin vV J that was the cause of his plunge from the hotel win- iov? V Nobody knows, but a H ' man who has figured in so W many extraordinary heart 6 affairs as this .prince of r amorous engineers must in- rtef- deed have .-ibundant cause f- ; for penitence. Before he was twenty he had founght a duel over a woman. Before he was twenty-one he was carrying on a violent double romance ro-mance with the woman who later became be-came his first wife and the young lady's mother. Just as this elderly sweetheart of his was about to yield to his ardent advance he .deserted her wrinkles and gray hairs for the fresh bloom of her daughter. Like the butterfly, d'Annunzio flitte I from one love flower to the next. His life became ?n endless procession of romances. ro-mances. He made no concealment of his desires. He lived only for his pleasures, ignoring the finer things in life for the dross. Women attracted him and he attracted at-tracted them. Soon after ho became famous throughout through-out the world as a poet and dramatist he met Duse, the greatest of tragediennes. That ho treated her shamefully is con-reded con-reded even by his friends. She sacrificed sacri-ficed her career for him, appearing only in his plays, most of which were un-Ruited un-Ruited to her personality. And then the poet deliberately dropped her, adding insult to injury by exposing her career prior to her sixteenth year. When tho World War camo along the poet was decorated many times for his heroism. Again he became the idol of his native land and the admired of the rest of the world. Again fair women smiled on him wettker ones fawned at his feet the ruen fumed and d'Annun-tio d'Annun-tio continued his conquests. It vas Idi Rubinstein who finally took his measure, brought the poet to her feet pleading mad love, and then laughed at him and departed for a tiger-hunting tiger-hunting expedition in the jungles ! The romance that ended in d'Annunzio's d'Annun-zio's second marriage came while he was "v ' r. 'vl i working strenously to hold Fiume against the Italian troops. In occasional occa-sional hours of idleness he amused i himself in the company of Luisa j Baccara, a young girl, whose beauty and talent as a pianist charmed him. I But d'Annunzio was still married to his first wife and the Italian laws do not grant divorces, not even to poets. So he promulgated a law in Fiume establishing divorces. Then one fine day he climbed into his aeroplane and flew off to Milan, followed fol-lowed more sedately try the pianiste, A few weeks latex they appeared in Switzerland, he armed with his Flume divorce, she with the necessary license, and were married. Whether they lived happily ever After is an open craeatiom Many think this second wife of his was the "charming, rather sad woman" who accompanied the poet to the Milan hotel and that Bho f-hares with him the secret of his broken head. Others assert it is just as likely to have been auy one of the numerous other beauties whose hearts d'Annunzio has captured, only to break and ruthlessly ruth-lessly cast aside. Whatever the true explanation of the mystery, it n a most interesting ono and one that makes the Italian poet and war I The former Marchesa di Gallese, the woman whom d'Annunzio finally decided he loved better than her mother, ardently wooed at the same time hero more than ever ono of fhe strangest of human enigmas. |