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Frulein 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[Pg 197] 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 Frulein von Meysenbug and his friends he held a sort of court.

We wonder if Friedrich Nietzsche had expected thus to find his master before him again? He could not avoid taking part in the walks, and in the evening parties: but he displayed a slight reserve. Whilst Richard Wagner talked of his future projects and of his coming work, and of the religious ideas which he wished to express, Nietzsche preferred to isolate himself with Paul Re and to talk of Chamfort and of Stendhal. Richard Wagner observed these conversations. Now, he disliked Jews, and Re displeased him. "Be careful," said he to Nietzsche, "that man will do you no good." Nietzsche did not modify his attitude. He spoke little, or, if he did mix in conversation, displayed a forced liveliness and a gaiety which were not altogether natural. Frulein von Meysenbug was more than once surprised:

"But I never suspected," she writes, "that any change had come over his sentiments, and I abandoned myself with a whole heart to the delights which came to complete those of Bayreuth. The joy I experienced in living in a like intimacy led me to quote one day, as we sat together at table, a thought from Goethe of which I was very fond: 'Happy he who, without hatred, withdraws[Pg 198] from the world, presses a friend to his breast, and thus enjoys that something which men know not nor suspect, that which crosses the labyrinth of the heart at night.' The Wagners did not know this quotation, and were so enchanted with it that I had to repeat it to them. Alas! I did not guess that the demons who also cross the labyrinth of the heart at night and intimately contemplate the divine mystery of sympathy between noble minds, had already begun their work of sowing discord and division."

Towards the end of November, Richard Wagner having left Sorrento, Frulein von Meysenbug and her friends were able to regulate their lives with a view to study. They arranged the employment of their time: up to noon, work and solitude; at noon, breakfast; after breakfast, a walk and conversation; in the evening, work and solitude; at night, after dinner, reading. Paul Re, the only healthy member in this society of invalid intellectuals, read aloud. Nietzsche and Frulein von Meysenbug were short-sighted; Brenner's lungs were affected. Who were their authors? Jacob Burckhardt, whose course of lectures on Greek culture they were studying (a student of Basle had lent his notes); a little of Michelet; Herodotus; Thucydides. A question posed, a doubt expressed, sometimes interrupted Paul Re's readings; and it was almost always Friedrich Nietzsche who concluded the short debate.

"Nietzsche was indeed the soul of sweetness and kindliness!" writes Frulein von Meysenbug in her charming account. "How well his good and amiable nature counterbalanced his destructive intelligence! How well he knew how to be gay, and to laugh with a good heart at the jokes which often came to disturb the serious atmosphere of our little circle. When we were together in[Pg 199] the evening, Nietzsche comfortably installed in an arm-chair in the shade of a screen; Dr. Re, our obliging reader, seated at the table on which the lamp was placed; young Brenner, near the chimney-piece opposite me, helping me to peel oranges for dinner; I often said, laughing: 'We represent truly an ideal family; here are we four people, who scarcely knew each other before, who are not united by any tie of relationship, who have no memories in common, and we now live together in absolute concord, in the most complete personal liberty, and in a perfect content of mind and heart.' So plans were soon sketched for the renewal and enlargement of this happy experience...."

Would it be impossible to come back each year to this Italian coast, to call one's friends thither, and thus to found a spiritual refuge, free of every school, of every Church? On the morrow of 1848 Frulein von Meysenbug had inspired at Hamburg a sort of Socialist phalanstery, which became the subject of one of the finest chapters of her book, and remained to her as one of the greatest memories of her life. Friedrich Nietzsche in no wise abandoned his ancient dream of a lay cloister. Thus the memories of the old lady agreed with the hopes of her young companion. Paul Re and Alfred Brenner did not refuse their co-operation, and the four friends gave the project their serious consideration.

"Already we are in quest of an appropriate locality," writes Frulein von Meysenbug, "for it was at Sorrento, in the heart of this delicious scenery, and not in the close air of a town, that our project was to take shape. We had discovered near the shore various spacious grottoes enlarged by the hand of man, veritable rock halls, in which a sort of pulpit is actually to be seen, which seems to be especially put there for a lecturer. It[Pg 200] is here that, during the hot days of summer, we thought of giving our lessons. We had besides conceived the plan of the school rather on the Greek model than according to modern ideas, and the teaching was chiefly to be a mutual instruction in the Peripatetic manner...."

Nietzsche wrote to his sister: "My idea, the school of the educators, or, if you like, modern cloister, ideal colony, free university, is always floating in the air. What will befall it, who can tell? Already we have, in imagination, named you directress and administrative head of our establishment for forty persons."

At the beginning of spring Brenner and Re left Sorrento. Frulein von Meysenbug and Nietzsche, now alone together, read to one another, but only a little, for reading tried the eyes of both. They preferred to talk. Nietzsche was never tired of listening to his companion's recitals. She told him of the lofty days of 1848. This he liked and, above all, he liked that she should talk to him of Mazzini.

He did not forget the chance by which he had had the Italian hero as carriage companion in April, 1871, as they were crossing the Alps. No compromise: live resolutely in the whole, the good, and the beautiful.... Mazzini had repeated this maxim of Goethe's to him, and Nietzsche associated it with his recollection of the man. Frulein von Meysenbug had known Mazzini in London. She had admired his authority in command, his exactitude in obedience, his readiness to serve every servant of the cause, whether he were called Cavour or Garibaldi. He had paid the price of this humility; for, forgotten in the hour of victory, the exile's ban had been maintained against him alone. Nevertheless, he had wished to end his days in his well-loved Liguria, and he had come there to die, hiding his name and race.[Pg 201] The doctor who took care of him was astonished—he had taken him for an Englishman—when he heard him speak in so pure an Italian. "Look you," replied the dying man, "no one has ever loved Italy so much as I loved her." Friedrich Nietzsche listened to these stories.