The dream or doctrine of the re-incarnation of souls, which has given so much consolation to so many questioners of eternity, was for Gérard (need we doubt?) a dream rather than a doctrine, but one of those dreams which are nearer to a man than his breath. "This vague and hopeless love," he writes in _Sylvie,_ "inspired by an actress, which night by night took hold of me at the hour of the performance, leaving me only at the hour of sleep, had its germ in the recollection of Adrienne, flower of the night, unfolding under the pale rays of the moon, rosy and blonde phantom, gliding over the green grass, half bathed in white mist.... To love a nun under the form of an actress! ... and if it were the very same! It is enough to drive one mad!" Yes, _il y a de quoi devenir fou,_ as Gérard had found; but there was also, in this intimate sense of the unity, perpetuity, and harmoniously recurring rhythm of nature, not a little of the inner substance of wisdom. It was a dream, perhaps refracted from some broken, illuminating angle by which madness catches unseen light, that revealed to him the meaning of his own superstition, fatality, malady: "During my sleep, I had a marvelous vision. It seemed to me that the goddess appeared before me, saying to me: 'I am the same as Mary, the same as thy mother, the same also whom, under all forms, thou hast always loved. At each of thine ordeals I have dropt yet one more of the masks with which I veil my countenance, and soon thou shalt see me as I am!'" And in perhaps his finest sonnet, the mysterious _Artémis,_ we have, under other symbols, and with the deliberate inconsequence of these sonnets, the comfort and despair of the same faith. La Treizième revient... C'est encor la première; Et c'est toujours la seule,--ou c'est le seul moment: Car es-tu reine, ô toi! la première ou dernière? Es-tu roi, toi le seul ou le dernier amant?... Aimez qui vous aima du berceau dans la bière; Celle que j'aimai seul m'aime encor tendrement; C'est la mort--ou la morte ... Ô délice! ô tourment! La Rose qu'elle tient, c'est la Rose trémière. Sainte napolitaine aux mains pleines de feux, Rose au cœur violet, fleur de sainte Gudule; As-tu trouvé ta croix dans le désert cieux? Roses blanches, tombez! vous insultez nos dieux: Tombez, fantômes blancs, de votre ciel qui brûle: --La Sainte de l'abîme est plus sainte à mes yeux!