This fact has been always conspicuous in all his writings on Pasteur, and it has been equally conspicuous in the unmeasured idolatry with which he has dipped his pen in all the honey of Hymettus to sing the praises of the man he loves. But this adoption of D'Annunzio into French literature has, with its incontestable advantages, equal penalties and disadvantages for the author; for one reader outside Italy who will read him in the original text, ten thousand will know him only in the French version, and twenty thousand will accept De Vogüé's description of his works without attempting to judge those for themselves. In the French version the romances gain in certain points; their excessive detail is abridged, their crudities are softened down, their wearisome analyses and too frequent obscenities are omitted. The translations of M. Herelle are, as all must know, admirable in grace and elegance, but, though as perfect as translations which are guilty of continual excisions can be, they fail to render the genius of D'Annunzio as it is to be seen and felt by those who read the works in the original tongue. In the French version they are much milder, much more tempered, much less unbridled, and much less cynically nude; but they are also much less vigorous, virile, impassioned, and furiously scornful. Many fine passages have been esteemed _longueurs_, and have been omitted altogether, and entire chapters have been sacrificed to the exigencies of taste or of space.
In the French edition of the _Trionfo_, nearly the whole book, entitled _La Vita Nuova_, containing the pilgrimage to Casalbordino is omitted. But without perusal of this marvellous reproduction of a scene of Italian fanaticism and frenzy, and of similar portions of his works, it is impossible to estimate fully the real D'Annunzio, and judge of his magnificent powers of observation and description, as well as of his incessant search for what is loathsome, his cruel exultation in his examination of physical diseases and moral leprosies.
I know not why this pilgrimage was rejected, for it is not more indecent than other portions of the book, and it is singularly true to certain phases of Italian life, in which all the Paganism bred in the blood and bone of the people is displayed, mixed with the ferocity of Christian bigotry. Let me here translate the opening of it:--