Nevertheless he was conscious that the fame, so long desired, approached. Georges Brandes, who was going to repeat and publish his lectures, found him a new reader, the Swede Auguste Strindberg. Very pleased, Nietzsche announced it to Peter Gast. "Strindberg has written to me," he said, "and for the first time I receive a letter in which I find a world-historic (Welthistorik) accent." In St. Petersburg they were getting ready to translate his Case of Wagner. In Paris, Hippolyte Taine sought and found him a correspondent: Jean Bordeau, contributor to the Débats and the Revue des Deux Mondes. "At last," wrote Nietzsche, "the grand Panama Canal towards France has been opened." His old comrade Deussen handed him two thousand francs, the offering of an unknown who wished to subscribe to an edition of his works. Madame de Salis Marschlins offered him a thousand. Friedrich Nietzsche should have been happy, but it was too late.
How were his last days spent? We do not know. He lived in a furnished apartment, the guest of a humble family, which lodged him and, if he wished, fed him. He corrected the proofs of Ecce Homo, adding a postscript to the early text, then a dithyrambic poem; meanwhile he prepared a new pamphlet for publication, Nietzsche contra Wagner. "Before launching the first edition of my great work," he wrote to his publisher, "we must prepare the public, we must create a genuine tension—or it will be Zarathustra over again." On the 8th of December he wrote to Peter Gast: "I have re-read Ecce Homo, I have weighed every word in scales of gold: literally it cuts the history of humanity into two sections—the highest superlative of dynamite." On the 29th of December he wrote to his publisher: "I am of your opinion, as to Ecce Homo; let us not exceed 1,000 copies; a thousand copies for Germany of a book, written in the grand style, is indeed rather more than reasonable. But in France, I say it quite seriously, I count on an issue of 80,000—or 40,000 copies." On the 2nd of January another letter (in a rough and deformed hand): "Return me the poem—on with Ecce!"
There exists a tradition, difficult to verify, that, during these latter days, Nietzsche often played fragments of Wagner to his hosts. He would say to them: "I knew him," and talk of Triebschen. The thing does not seem improbable, for now his memories of his greatest happiness may well have visited him, and he may have found delight in recounting them to simple people ignorant of his life. Had he not just written in Ecce Homo:
"Since I am here recalling the consolations of my life, I ought to express in a word my gratitude for what was by far my most profound and best-loved joy—my intimacy with Richard Wagner. I wish to be just with regard to the rest of my human relationships; but I absolutely cannot efface from my life the days at Triebschen, days of confidence, of gaiety; of sublime flashes—days of profound happiness. I do not know what Wagner was for others: our sky was never darkened by a cloud."
On the 9th of January, 1889, Franz Overbeck was sitting, with his wife, at the window of his quiet house in Basle, when he saw old Burckhardt stop and ring at his door. He was surprised: Burckhardt was not an intimate, and some intuition warned him that Nietzsche, their common friend, was the cause of this visit. For some weeks he had had disquieting notes from Turin. Burckhardt brought him a long letter which all too clearly confirmed his presentiments. Nietzsche was mad. "I am Ferdinand de Lesseps," he wrote, "I am Prado, I am Chambige [the two assassins with whom the Paris newspapers were then occupied]; I have been buried twice this autumn."
A few moments later Overbeck received a similar letter, and all Nietzsche's friends were likewise advised. He had written to each of them.
"Friend Georges," he wrote to Brandes, "since you have discovered me, it is not wonderful to find me: what is now difficult is to lose me.
"THE CRUCIFIED."