Place of Prodigies

At Milan a potent firm of Italian piano manufacturers received last week a note on impressively crested paper: Dear Companions in Sonorous Construction : Upon the arrival of the piano which I ordered from you recently its strings began suddenly to vibrate, drowning the sound of nearby church bells. Not without trembling I perceived that the shadow of Franz Liszt, who was once a guest here, had entered the instrument and was producing with long immaterial fingers a beautiful rhythmic tempest. "This is a place of mysteries and prodigies. Rejoice with me!" (Signed) Gabriele d' Annunzio Gardone, Lago di Garda.

Il Gabriele's retreat* on the shores of Lago di Garda is a residence of such sumptuous luxuriance as to stagger confirmed sybarites. When the poet who shattered Duse's heart reclines upon the velvet coverings of his fantastic bed, a painting of himself as a leper leers down at him in a manner which he is said to find "exquisite." When the firebrand who seized Fiume strides out upon his lawn, the dreadnaught Puglia, placed there high and dry by the grateful Italian Government, affords him a milieu in which to pace the quarter deck of his extravagant soul. The home of d' Annunzio is a nestling spot for the prodigious and the absurd. That no spiritually played piano has previously been reported there is to be wondered at.

When Mme. d' Annunzio (the Princess Monte Neyoso, from whom he has been "separated" for nearly 30 years) made one of her infrequent visits to Gardone last week, she was received with a salute of five guns from the Puglia.

*Il Gabriele announced recently that he will not stir from his literary workshop at Gardone until All Saints' Day (Nov. 1). "Nothing," he declared, "shall interrupt my daily labors save an unanticipated thunderbolt."