La Nuit Latente La luxure unique et multiple Se mire à mon miroir ... Ma visage de clown me navre. Je cherche ton lit de cadavre Ainsi que le calme d’un havre, O mon beau Désespoir! ... Mon âme, que l’angoisse exalte, Vient, en pleurant, faire une halte Devant des parois de basalte Aux bleus de viaduc ... Et, lasse de la beauté fourbe, De la joie où l’esprit s’embourbe, Je me détourne et je me courbe Sur ton vitreux néant.[26] Other poems in the same volume make it evident that at this time she longed for the courage to kill herself, and in reverie dwelt upon the death of both her current loves. By 1904 she had apparently freed herself of the old entanglement and yielded to the inevitable ripening of the new. _A L’Heure des Mains Jointes_, published in 1906 but reflecting this emotional period, opens with the idealistic title poem: J’ai puérilisé mon coeur dans l’innocence De notre amour, éveil de calice enchantée ... Ma douce! je t’adore avec simplicité ... Tes cheveux et ta voix et tes bras m’ont guérie. J’ai dépouillé la crainte et le furtif soupçon Et l’artificiel et la bizarrerie. J’ai abrité ainsi mon coeur de malade guérie Sous le toit amical de la bonne maison ... This poem and many others in the volume have, indeed, a new simplicity, occasionally sacrificing to it something of her earlier verbal magic. They evoke the image of a soft-spoken, light-footed pale girl with tawny hair who turns to her for comfort and peace as well as reciprocating them. One sees, too, a garden above Nice, surrounded by pines and full of pale iris, for Vivien carried symbolism into daily life—violets for the first love, lotus and tiger lilies for the second, iris for the third. The love celebrated here seems complete and happy, combining passion with companionship, and it was during 1904 that Vivien tried to link her friend’s life to hers even in authorship with the “Paule Riversdale” experiment. From this year come three volumes under Vivien’s name and three or four of joint authorship, justifying Germain’s statement that this alliance was fruitful. But the collaborative prose-poems, narratives, and verses were not well received. Of “Riversdale’s” _Echos et Reflets_ the reviewer of poetry for the _Mercure de France_ said merely, ‘Renée Vivien is no longer alone in evoking the glorious and tragic shade of Sappho.’ On _L’Etre Double_, one pseudonymous narrative, Rachilde’s total comment was: Que de vers! Et que d’histoires japonaises. Le roman, peu chose du reste, un amour de femmes, est complètement noyé par ce déluge de citations. Trop de vers! trop de fleurs! trop de lucioles, trop de poissons bleus![27] Vivien’s own autobiographical tale, _Une Femme M’Apparut_, fared thus: