No account of the extraordinary drama—­farce would be a better name were its possibilities not so tragic—­which is being staged at Fiume would be complete without some mention of the romantic figure who is playing the part of hero or villain, according to whether your sympathies are with the Italians or the Jugoslavs.  There is nothing romantic, mind you, in Gabriele d’Annunzio’s personal appearance.  On the contrary, he is one of the most unimpressive-looking men I have ever seen.  He is short of stature—­not over five feet five, I should guess—­and even his beautifully cut clothes, which fit so faultlessly about the waist and hips as to suggest the use of stays, but partially camouflage the corpulency of middle age.  His head looks like a new-laid egg which has been highly varnished; his pointed beard is clipped in a fashion which reminded me of the bronze satyrs in the Naples museum; a monocle, worn without a cord, conceals his dead eye, which he lost in battle.  His walk is a combination of a mince and a swagger; his movements are those of an actor who knows that the spotlight is upon him.

Though d’Annunzio takes high rank among the modern poets, many of his admirers holding him to be the greatest one alive, he is a far greater orator.  His diction is perfect, his wealth of imagery exhaustless; I have seen him sway a vast audience as a wheat-field is swayed by the wind.  His life he values not at all; the four rows of ribbons which on the breast of his uniform make a splotch of color were not won by his verses.  Though well past the half-century mark, he has participated in a score of aerial combats, occupying the observer’s seat in his fighting Sva and operating the machine-gun.  But perhaps the most brilliant of his military exploits was a bloodless one, when he flew over Vienna and bombed that city with proclamations, written by himself, pointing out to the Viennese the futility of further resistance.  His popularity among all classes is amazing; his word is law to the great organization known as the Combatenti, composed of the 5,000,000 men who fought in the Italian armies.  He is a jingo of the jingoes, his plans for Italian expansion reaching far beyond the annexation of Fiume or even all of Dalmatia, for he has said again and again that he dreams of that day when Italy will have extended her rule over all that territory which once was held by Rome.

[Illustration:  THE INHABITANTS OF FIUME CHEERING D’ANNUNZIO AND HIS RAIDERS

“Save only Barcelona, Fiume has the most excitable population of any place that I know.”

The patron saint of the city is, appropriately enough, St. Vitus]