[CHAPTER V]
CRISIS AND CONVALESCENCE
Friedrich Nietzsche returned to Basle. His eyesight was feeble and painful, so that he had to accept the help which two friends offered him: one of them was a young student named Köselitz, whom he had jokingly called Peter Gast, Peter the Guest—the surname stuck to him; the other was that Paul Rée, the Jew, with the acute mind, whom he had known for two years. Thanks to their devotion he was able to re-read the notes written at Klingenbrunn; he hoped to find matter in them for the second "Unseasonable Thought." Paul Rée was then publishing his Psychological Observations, reflections inspired by the English and French masters, Stuart Mill and La Rochefoucauld. Friedrich Nietzsche heard this little work read, and appreciated it. He admired this prudent style of conducting thought; he enjoyed it on the morrow of the emphatic ceremonies of Bayreuth, as though it were a repose; and he resolved to study at the school of Rée and of his masters. Nevertheless he always felt the immense void which his renouncement of Richard Wagner left in him.
"At this moment," he wrote, the 20th September, 1876, "I have every leisure to think of the past—farthest and nearest—for my oculist makes me sit idle for long periods in a darkened room. Autumn, after such a summer, is for me, and no doubt not only for me, more autumn than any other. After the great event comes an attack of blacker melancholy, and to escape it one cannot fly too quickly towards Italy or towards work, or towards both."
He had obtained the leave for which he had asked, and the sole gladness which he had in life was the certainty that he would be free for some months from all professional duties.
He left Switzerland at the end of October. Alfred Brenner and Paul Rée accompanied him. The three Germans went down towards Genoa, and thence took a steamer to Naples, where Fräulein von Meysenbug was expecting them.
"I found Nietzsche," she writes, "disappointed sufficiently, because the journey and the arrival in Naples, in the middle of this noisy, clamorous, importunate people, had been very disagreeable to him. In the evening, however, I asked the visitors to take a drive to Pausilippe. It was such an evening as one sees only down here; sky, earth, and sea floated in a glory of indescribable colours, which filled the soul as an enchanting music, a harmony from which every discordant note was gone. I observed how Nietzsche's face lit up in joyous and almost childlike astonishment, as though he were dominated by a profound emotion; finally he gave vent to enthusiastic exclamations, which I welcomed as a happy augury for the efficacy of his visit."
Fräulein von Meysenbug had hired a villa—it was an old pension—on that slope which glides rapidly towards the sea, carrying its olives, its lemons, its cypresses, and its vines with it down to the waves. "On the first floor," she writes, "there were rooms with terraces for the gentlemen; on the second, rooms for myself and my maid, with a big sitting-room for our common use."
She installed her guests in this retreat which she had selected for them; but they had to wait a while before they could enjoy the retired life for which they were in search. A too illustrious neighbour was stopping hard by—none other than Richard Wagner, who, accompanied by all his people, was resting at Sorrento after the immense effort and triumph of Bayreuth.
He showed no signs of fatigue. His days were spent in walking, his nights in conversation. With Fräulein von Meysenbug and his friends he held a sort of court.