"Yes," said he (Miss Salomé reports these words), "my adventures began in this manner. They are not ended. Where will they lead me? Whither shall I adventure again? Should I not come back to the faith? to some new belief?"
He added gravely: "In any case a return to the past is more likely than immobility."
Friedrich Nietzsche had not yet avowed his love; but he felt its force and no longer resisted. Only he feared to declare himself. He begged Paul Rée to speak in his name, and withdrew.
On the 8th of May, settled for some days in Basle, he saw the Overbecks and confided in them with a strange exaltation. A woman has come into his life; it is a happiness for him; it will benefit his thought, which will henceforward be livelier, richer in its shades and emotion. Assuredly he would prefer not to marry Miss Lou, he disdains all fleshly ties; but perhaps he ought to give her his name for her protection against scandalmongers, and from this spiritual union would be born a spiritual son: the prophet Zarathustra. He is poor; this is a vexation, an obstacle. But could he not sell all his future work in a lump to some publisher for a considerable sum? He thought of doing so. These out-bursts did not fail to trouble the Overbecks, who augured ill of a liaison so bizarre and of an enthusiasm so ready.
Friedrich Nietzsche at last received Lou Salomé's reply: she did not wish to marry. An unhappy love affair, which had just crossed her life, left her, she said, without strength to conceive and nourish a new affection. She therefore refused Nietzsche's offer. But she was able to sweeten the terms of this refusal: the only thing of which she could dispose, her friendship, her spiritual affection, she offered.
Friedrich Nietzsche returned at once to Lucerne. He saw Lou Salomé and pressed her to give a more favourable reply; but the young girl repeated her refusal and her offer. She was to be present in July at the Bayreuth festivals, from which Nietzsche wished to abstain. She promised to rejoin him when they were over and to stay for some weeks at his side. She would then listen to his teaching, she would confront the last thought of the master with that of the liberated disciple. Nietzsche had finally to accept these conditions, these limits which the young girl placed on their friendship. He advised her to read one of his books, Schopenhauer as Educator. He was always glad to acknowledge this work of his youth, this hymn to the bravery of a thinker and to voluntary solitude. "Read it," he said to her, "and you will be ready to hear me."
Friedrich Nietzsche left Basle and re-entered Germany, desirous of becoming reconciled to his country. He was, as we know, accustomed to such absorbing and unexpected desires. A Swiss, whom he had met at Messina, had praised the beauty of Grunewald, near Berlin; he wished to settle there, and wrote to Peter Gast, to whom, six weeks earlier, he had suggested as a summer residence Messina.
He went to visit this Grunewald, which pleased him well enough; but he saw, on the same occasion, Berlin and a few Berliners, who displeased him extremely. He perceived that his last books had not been read, and that his thought was ignored. He was only known as the friend of Paul Rée, and no doubt his disciple. This he did not like. He went without delay to spend some weeks in Naumburg, where he dictated the manuscript of his coming book, La Gaya Scienza[4]. To his own people, it seems, to his mother and to his sister, he spoke discreetly of the new friend. His gaiety amazed them: they did not discern its cause. They did not know that their strange Friedrich had in his heart a sentiment, a hope of happiness, which Lou Salomé had been far from discouraging.
The representation of Parsifal was fixed for the 27th July. Friedrich Nietzsche went to stay in a village of the Thuringian forests, Tautenburg, not far from Bayreuth, where all his friends were to foregather: the Overbecks, the Seydlitzs, Gersdorff, Fräulein von Meysenbug, Lou Salomé, Lisbeth Nietzsche. He alone was absent from the rendezvous. At this moment a word from the master would perhaps have sufficed to bring him back; perhaps he waited for and hoped for this word. Fräulein von Meysenbug wished to make an attempt at reconciliation: she dared to name Nietzsche in Wagner's presence. Wagner told her to be silent and went out of the room banging the door.