ll on the
mountain of the Camaldoli--

"Sibyl, Sibyl forsaken; spirit of the days of old, joined to a brain
which rebels against the divine inspiration; broken lyre, mute
instrument, whose tones the world of to-day, if it heard them, could not
understand, but yet in whose depth the eternal harmony murmurs
imprisoned; priestess of death, I, I who feel and know that before now I
have been Pythia, have wept before now, before now have spoken, but who
cannot recollect, alas, cannot utter the word of healing! Yes, yes! I
remember the cavern of truth and the access of revelation; but the word
of human destiny, I have forgotten it; but the talisman of deliverance,
it is lost from my hand. And yet, indeed, much, much have I seen! and
when suffering presses me sore, when indignation takes hold of me, when
I feel Prometheus wake up in my heart and beat his puissant wings
against the stone which confines him,--oh! then, in prey to a frenzy
without a name, to a despair without bounds, I invoke the unknown master
and friend who might illumine my spirit and set free my tongue; but I
grope in darkness, and my tired arms grasp nothing save delusive
shadows. And for ten thousand years, as the sole answer to my cries, as
the sole comfort in my agony, I hear astir, over this earth accurst, the
despairing sob of impotent agony. For ten thousand years I have cried in
infinite space: _Truth! Truth!_ For ten thousand years infinite space
keeps answering me: _Desire, Desire_. O Sibyl forsaken! O mute Pythia!
dash then thy head against the rocks of thy cavern, and mingle thy
raging blood with the foam of the sea; for thou deemest thyself to have
possessed the almighty Word, and these ten thousand years thou art
seeking him in vain."[316]

Or Sylvia's cry over Jacques[317] by his glacier in the Tyrol--

"When such a man as thou art is born into a world where he can do no
true service; when, with the soul of an apostle and the courage of a
martyr, he has simply to push his way among the heartless and aimless
crowds which vegetate without living; the atmosphere suffocates him and
he dies. Hated by sinners, the mock of fools, disliked by the envious,
abandoned by the weak, what can he do but return to God, weary with
having labored in vain, in sorrow at having accomplished nothing? The
world remains in all its vileness and in all its hatefulness; this is
what men call, 'the triumph of good sense over enthusiasm.'"[318]

Or Jacques himself, and