he writes.

In the _Nuit de Mai_, the earliest of these songs of despair, we have
the poet's symbol of the pelican giving its entrails as food to its
starving young. The only symbols that we get in this poetry are symbols
of sadness, and these are at times given in magnificent fulness of
detail. We have solitude in the _Nuit de decembre_, and the labourer
whose house has been burnt in the _Lettre a Lamartine_. The _Nuit
d'aout_ gives proof of a wild effort to give life another trial, but in
the _Auit d'octobre_ anger gets the better of him once more.

_Honte a toi, qui la premiere
M'as appris la trahison . . . !_

The question has often been asked whether the poet refers here to the
woman he loved in Venice but it matters little whether he did or not.
He only saw her through the personage who from henceforth symbolized
"woman" to him and the suffering which she may cause a man. And yet, as
this suffering became less intense, softened as it was by time, he began
to discover the benefit of it. His soul had expanded, so that he was now
in communion with all that is great in Nature and in Art. The harmony
of the sky, the silence of night, the murmur of flowing water, Petrarch,
Michel Angelo, Shakespeare, all appealed to him. The day came when he
could write:

_Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre
Plus vrai que le bonheur_.

This is the only philosophy for a conception of life which treats love