Peter Gast received a message the tragic significance of which he did not understand:
"A mon maestro Pietro.
"Sing me a new song. The world is clear and all the skies rejoice."
"Ariadne, I love you," he wrote to Cosima Wagner.
Overbeck started immediately. He found Nietzsche, watched over by his hosts, ploughing the piano with his elbow, singing and crying his Dionysian glory. He was able to bring him back to Basle, and introduce him, without too painful a scene, into a hospital, where his mother came to seek him.
He lived another ten years. The first of them were cruel, the later more kindly; sometimes even there seemed to be hope. He would recall his work.
"Have I not written fine books?" he would say.
He was shown portraits of Wagner.
"Him," he would say, "I loved much."
These returns of consciousness might have been frightful; it seems that they were not. One day his sister, as she sat by his side, could not restrain her tears.