Another, having said to him one day: "I have been told about your books. You've written in one of them, 'If thou goest among women, do not forget thy whip.'"
"Dear lady, dear friend," answered Nietzsche, in a pained voice, taking the hands of her who reproached him in his own; "do not misunderstand me; it is not thus that I am to be understood."
Did they admire him? To dare to admire an unrecognised author a very sure judgment is needed; and no doubt they lacked in necessary daring. They esteemed, they liked their hotel companion, and recognised his singular genius in conversation; at the table d'hôte they looked to have the place near his: little enough it seems if one consider his present fame; then it was a great deal to him. He recovered in the Engadine, thanks to them, a little of the confidence which was necessary to his soul and which he had been losing in Germany. During the summer of 1886, some good musicians passed through Sils. In Nietzsche they discovered a very rare listener, and they liked to be heard by him. This courtesy touched him: "I notice," he wrote to Peter Gast, "that our artists only sing and play for me. I should be greatly spoilt if this continued."
A certain Oriental story narrates the adventures of a masked sovereign who travels in his provinces; he is not recognised but divined; an instinct of respect awakes at his approach. In this mountain hotel, does not Nietzsche appear as a masked, a half-divined sovereign?
Nevertheless it was but a poor comfort. Could these women lighten a distress which they could not measure? Nietzsche was traversing that grave moment of life in which a man, however unwilling to be taught, must learn at last what his fate with inexorable constancy gives and refuses him; he had to tear his last hopes from his heart. "I have been unspeakably sad in these latter days," he wrote to Peter Gast, "and cares have deprived me of sleep." The information is brief. To his sister he avows more; he addresses to her pages upon pages that are terrible in their power and monotony.
"Where are they, those old friends, with whom I formerly felt so closely bound? We inhabit different worlds, we no longer speak the same tongue! As a stranger, a proscribed man, I wander among them; never a word, never a look now reaches me. I hold my peace—for none understands my speech—ah, I can say it, they have never understood me!... It is terrible to be condemned to silence, when one has so many things to say. Am I created for solitude, never to find any one with whom I may make myself understood? Incommunicability is in truth the most awful of solitudes, to be different, to wear a mask of brass harder than any mask of brass—perfect friendship is only possible inter pares. Inter pares! a phrase which intoxicates me: what confidence, what hope, what perfume, what beatitude it promises the man who necessarily and constantly lives alone; to a man who is different—who has never met any one of his race. And nevertheless he is a good seeker; he has sought much. Ah, the swift folly of those hours in which the solitary thinks he has found a friend, embraces him and holds him in his arms; it is a present from heaven, an inestimable gift. An hour later he rejects him with disgust, he rejects himself with disgust, as though soiled, diminished, sick from his own society. A profound man needs friends, unless indeed he has a God. And I have neither God nor friend! Ah, my sister, those whom you call by this name, once they were friends—but now?
"Excuse this burst of passion; my last journey is the cause....
"My health is neither good nor bad; it is only the poor soul which is wounded and thirsting. Give me a little circle of men who will listen to me and understand—and I am in good health.
"Here everything takes its course; the two English-women and the old Russian lady, the musician, have come back; the latter very ill...."
Nietzsche now went on with his labours on the Wille zur Macht. His unfortunate passage through Germany had modified his arrangements. He thought: "What use is it my writing warlike books? Without allies, without readers, I cannot prevent the abasement of Europe; let it be brought about then. One day it will find its goal—a day which I shall not see. Then my books will be discovered, then I shall have my readers. For them I should write, for them I should determine my fundamental ideas. To-day, I cannot fight, for I have not enemies even...." At the beginning of July, when leaving the Germany which had tried him so hardly, he drew up a detailed plan. In September he wrote: