This accounted for her letter. It was Fräulein von Meysenbug's habit to do good, and her taste; but perhaps she sometimes forgot that goodness is a difficult art in which the results of defeat are cruel.
The girl whom Fräulein von Meysenbug had met was called Lou Salomé. She was scarcely twenty years old; she was a Russian and admirable as regards her intelligence and intellectual ardour; her beauty was not perfect, but the more exquisite for its imperfections, and she was fascinating in the extreme. Sometimes it happens that there arises, in Paris, in Florence, in Rome, some excited young lady, a native of Philadelphia, of Bucharest, or of Kief, who comes with a barbarous impatience to be initiated into culture and to conquer a hearth in our old capital. The lady in question was of rare quality assuredly; her mother followed her across Europe, carrying the cloaks and the shawls.
Fräulein von Meysenbug conceived an affection for her. She gave her Nietzsche's works; Lou Salomé read them and seemed to understand. She talked to her at great length of this extraordinary man who had sacrificed friendship with Wagner for the maintenance of his liberty: He is a very rugged philosopher, she said, but he is the most sensitive, the most affectionate friend, and, for those who know him, the thought of his solitary life is a source of sadness. Miss Salomé displayed a great deal of enthusiasm and longing; she declared that she felt vowed to a spiritual share in such a life, and that she wished to make Nietzsche's acquaintance. In concert with Paul Rée, who, it seems, had known her for a longer time, and also appreciated her, Fräulein von Meysenbug wrote to Friedrich Nietzsche.
He arrived, he heard the praises of Miss Lou sung; she was a woman of elevated feeling, shrewd and brave; intransigent in research and in affirmation; a heroine in the manner of her childhood; it was the promise of a great life. He agreed to see her. One morning, at St. Peter's, she was presented to him and conquered him at once. He had forgotten, during his long months of meditation, the pleasure of being listened to and of talking. "The young Russian" (it is thus that he calls her in his letters) listened deliciously. She spoke little, but her calm look, her assured and gentle movements, her least words, left no doubt as to the quickness of her mind and to the presence of a soul. Very quickly, perhaps at first sight, Nietzsche liked her. "There's a soul," he said to Fräulein von Meysenbug, "which has made a little body for itself with a breath."[3] Miss Salomé did not let herself be thus enticed. Nevertheless, she felt the singular quality of the man who talked to her; she had long conversations with him, and the violence of his thought troubled her even in her sleep. The adventure—it was in fact a drama—commenced at once.
A few days after this first interview, Miss Salomé and her mother left Rome. The two philosophers, Nietzsche and Rée, went with her, both of them enthusiasts for the young girl. Nietzsche said to Rée:
"There's an admirable woman, marry her." "No," answered Rée; "I am a pessimist, and the idea of propagating human life is odious to me. Marry her yourself; she is the companion that you want...." Nietzsche dismissed this idea. Perhaps he said to his friend, as he had said to his sister: "I marry! Never, I would have to be a bar somewhere or other." Miss Salomé's mother examined these two men who were so attentive to her child; Friedrich Nietzsche perplexed her; she preferred Paul Rée.
The two friends and the two philosophers stopped at Lucerne. Friedrich Nietzsche wished to show his new friend that house at Triebschen where he had known Richard Wagner. Who was not then thinking of the master? He brought her as far as the poplars whose high foliage enclosed the gardens. He recounted to her the unforgettable days, the gaieties, the magnificent angers of the great man. Seated by the border of the lake, he talked in a low, contained voice, and turned his face a little away, for it was troubled by the memory of those joys of which he had deprived himself. Suddenly he grew silent, and the young girl, observing him, saw that he wept.
He confessed all his life to her; his childhood, the pastor's house, the mysterious grandeur of the father who had been so quickly taken away; the pious years, the first doubts, and the horror of this world without a God in which one must resolve to live; the discovery of Schopenhauer and of Wagner, the religious feeling which they had inspired in him and which had consoled him for the loss of his faith.