The difficulty of his work was great and insomnia overcame him. Nevertheless he persevered, and denied himself the sad joy of a final embrace of his sister Lisbeth, who was about to follow her husband to South America. "You will live down there then," he wrote to her, "and I here, in a solitude more unattainable than all the Paraguays. My mother will have to live alone and we must all be courageous. I love you and I weep.—FRIEDRICH."
A week passed, and he had formed other projects. He was negotiating with his publisher in regard to the repurchase of his books and their republication. It was a pretext that he grasped for going to Germany. "A business matter, which makes my presence of use, comes to the aid of my desire," he wrote, and set out for Naumburg without delay.
The meeting was a grave one: brother and sister conversed tenderly on the eve of a separation which they knew to be definitive. Nietzsche made no secret of the difficulties of his life. "Alone I confront a tremendous problem," he said; "it is a forest in which I lose myself, a virgin forest—Wald und Urwald. I need help. I need disciples, I need a master. To obey would be sweet! If I had lost myself on a mountain, I would obey the man who knew that mountain; sick, I would obey a doctor; and if I should meet a man capable of enlightening me on moral ideas, I would listen to him, I would follow him; but I find no one, no disciples and fewer masters. "... I am alone." His sister repeated the advice which she had constantly given: that Friedrich should return to some University; young men had always listened to him, they would listen to him, they would understand him. "Young men are so stupid!" answered Nietzsche, "and professors still more stupid! Besides, all the German Universities repel me; where could I teach?" "In Zürich," his sister suggested. "There is only one town that I can tolerate, and it is Venice."
He went to Leipsic to negotiate with his publisher, who received him without much attention; his books did not sell. He returned to Naumburg, said a final farewell, and left.
Where was he to find a refuge for the winter? On the last occasion he had been irritated by the noisy swarms of Nice. He thinks of Vallombrosa. Lanzky had recommended this beautiful forest in the Tuscan Apennines, and was waiting for him at Florence. Before leaving Germany, Nietzsche, passing through Munich, visited a former friend, the Baron von Seydlitz, who introduced him to his wife and showed him his Japanese collection. The wife was young and charming, the Japanese things pleased Nietzsche; he discovered this art, he liked these stamps, these little gay objects which conformed so little to the sad modern taste, so very little to the sad taste of the Germans. Seydlitz understood beautiful things, and knew how to live; Nietzsche envied him a little. "Perhaps it is time, dear Lisbeth," he wrote to his sister, "for you to find me a wife. Let us say, still young, pretty, gay; in short, a courageous little being à la Irène von Seydlitz (we almost 'thee and thou' each other)."
He reached Tuscany. Lanzky received him, accompanied him, and brought him to the observatory of Arcetri, on the heights of San Miniato, where lived a man of a rare kind—a reader of his books. Leberecht Tempel kept on his table, near his bizarre instruments, the works of Herr Friedrich Nietzsche, many passages of which he knew by heart and willingly recited. Leberecht Tempel was a singularly noble, sincere, and disinterested nature. The two men talked for half an hour and, it seems, understood each other. When Nietzsche left he was deeply moved.
"I wish that this man had never known my books," said he to Lanzky. "He is too sensible, too good. I shall harm him."
For he knew the terrible consequences of his thoughts and feared for those who read them suffering similar to his own.
He did not stay in Tuscany: the harsh, cold air which descended from the mountains upon Florence incommoded him. He was recaptured by memories of Nice, the town with two hundred and twenty days of full sunshine—it was from Nice that he wrote to his sister, on the 15th of November, 1885: