After three days, the too-youthful emissary left, greatly moved by what had passed, and promising to rejoin Nietzsche at Nice, as the latter, at least, understood. Nietzsche felt that he had greatly carried the day. "Such an encounter as ours must have an early and far-reaching importance," he wrote to Stein a few days after his departure. "Believe me, you now belong to that little band whose fate, for good or ill, is linked to mine." Stein answered that the days at Sils-Maria were to him a great memory, a grave and solemn moment of his life; and then, rather prudently, went on to speak of the binding conditions imposed on him by his works and his profession. What he did not say was, "Yes, I am yours."
Was Nietzsche's mind open enough to perceive the reservation? One cannot tell. He was making marvellous plans, and dreamt anew of an "ideal cloister." To Fräulein von Meysenbug he made the naïve proposal that she should come to Nice and spend the winter near him.
Chance permits us to discover the depths of his soul. He had gone down to Basle in September, and there Overbeck visited him at his hotel, and found him in bed, suffering from a sick headache, very low in himself, and at the same time exceedingly talkative. His excited speech troubled Overbeck, who was initiated into the mystery of the "Eternal Return." "One day we shall be here together again in this very place; I again, as I now am, sick; you again, as now you are, amazed at my words." He spoke in a low and trembling voice, and his face was troubled—this is the Nietzsche that Lou Salomé has described. Overbeck listened gently, but avoided argument of any sort, and left with evil forebodings. Not until the tragic meeting in Turin in January, 1889, was he again to see his friend.
Nietzsche merely passed through Basle. His sister, whom he had not seen since the quarrel of the previous autumn, gave him a rendezvous at Zürich. It was to announce her marriage, which had taken place in secret some months before. She was now no longer Fräulein Nietzsche but Madame Förster, ready to leave for Paraguay with the colonists who were under the charge of her husband. Recrimination would therefore have been a waste of time. The step had been taken; Nietzsche did not discuss it, and did his best to be pleasant once again to the sister who was lost to him. "My brother," wrote Madame Förster, "seems to be in a very satisfactory condition. He is bright and charming; we have been together for six weeks, talking, laughing over everything."
She has left us a record of these days which she supposes—or pretends to suppose—were happy. Nietzsche came upon the works of one Freiligrath, a mediocre and popular poet. On the cover of the volume was inscribed Thirty—eighth Edition. With comical solemnity he exclaimed, "Here, then, we have at last a true German poet. The Germans buy his verse!" He decided to be a good German for the day, and bought a copy. He read and was hugely diverted—
"Wüstenkönig ist der Löwe;
Will er sein Gebiet durchfliegen."
(King of deserts is the Hon:
Will he traverse his dominion.)
He declaimed the pompous hemistiches. The Zürich hotel resounded with his childish laughter as he amused himself improvising verses on every subject in the manner of a Freiligrath.
"Hullo!" said an old general to the brother and sister. "What is amusing you two? It makes one jealous to hear you. One wants to laugh like you."
It is unlikely that Nietzsche had much cause for laughter. One wonders whether he could contemplate those thirty-eight editions of Freiligrath without bitterness. During his stay in Zürich he went to the library to look through the files of the newspapers and reviews for his name. It would have meant a good deal to him to have read a capable criticism of his work, to have seen his thought reflected in another's; but no voice ever answered his labours.