But Fate intervenes to separate the two lovers. A lyrical intermezzo drags the pageant of a broken heart through all the miracles of Italy. The universe has avenged itself upon the woman; she is no longer the child of the sun, the sister of the winds, but an unhappy mortal everywhere estranged. And in this desolation, this fast in the desert, there dawns upon her the mystic apprehension of the spiritual world. A series of poems, entitled _Les Élévations_, enshrines, this experience of our eternity:-- ‘Mon Dieu, je ne sais rien, mais je sais que je souffre Au delà de l’appui et du secours humain, Et puisque tous les ponts sont rompus sur le gouffre, Je vous nommerai Dieu, et je vous tends la main.... ‘Les lumineux climats d’où sont venus mes pères Ne me préparaient pas à m’approcher de vous, Mais on est votre enfant dès que l’on désespère Et quand l’intelligence à plier se résout.... ‘Comme vous accablez vos préférés, Seigneur Il semble que votre ample et salubre courage Veuille assainir en nous quelque obscur marécage, Tant vous nous arrachez, par des sueurs de sang, L’âcre ferment vivant, orgueilleux et puissant. On pense qu’on mourra du mal que vous nous faites, Et puis, c’est tout à coup la fin de la tempête.’ But once again a flaming sword waves before her eyes and drives her forth from the common experience of humanity; even as Nature and genius banished her from love, so the cold hand of death shuts her out from religion. Her beloved dies; and she has looked on his waxen face, and seen the leaden coffin go down into the grave. This terrible moment--which has driven many in a panic of anguish from the despair of this world to the desperate hope of a Beyond, as a stag harried and hunted to the extreme edge of a cliff will spring into the sea--this ‘sombre accident quotidien de la mort’ immures our poetess in the prison of a stoical grief, where sometimes (but very rarely) rustle the wings of that angel who led Peter out of his captivity. In that austere infrangible house of mourning she remains, aloof from life and Nature, choosing this living death rather than the treason of a life renewed and fruitful, though bereaved. There she sits still, forgetting the spring and the summer, and looks in a white agony upon the face of Truth. And in verse as firm and full as that of Emily Brontë, she recites the sterile lesson she has learned:-- ‘Je m’emplis d’une vaste et rude connaissance, Que j’acquiers d’heure en heure, ainsi qu’un noir trésor, Qui me dispense une âpre et totale science; Je sais que tu es mort.’ MADAME COLETTE