"It was with a feeling of wild joy," he writes, "that I returned from Gare du Nord, where I had left my dear little wife who was going to our child who had fallen ill in a distant country. The sacrifice of my heart was thus made complete." Their last words, "When do we meet again?--Soon," were deceptive; an intuition truly told him that they had parted for ever. He had placed human affection on the altar of truth-seeking, thus practising the motto with which _Inferno_ opens: Courbe la tête, fier Sicambre! Adore ce que tu as brûlé, Brûle ce que tu as adoré! At the Café de la Régence he sat down at the table where he used to sit with his wife, "the beautiful wardress of my prison who spied on my soul day and night, guessed my secret thoughts, watched the course of my ideas, jealously observed my spirit's striving towards the unknown." He felt free, a sense of mental expansion, of liberated power, a call to reach the arcanum of human knowledge. In Paris he was now the playwright of the day. The success of _Lady Julie_ and _Creditors_ was followed by a brilliant performance of _The Father_ at Théâtre de l'Œuvre in December. All Paris talked of his originality and of his misogyny which provided a piquant sensation, and a subject for interesting gossip in literary and dramatic circles. He was interviewed and photographed--he was the _cher maître_ of the theatrical manager who expected from him a sensible appreciation of his possibilities for further triumphs on the stage. In Berlin he was the literary lion of the moment. His plays and novels lay in the booksellers' windows in attractive German dress, his portrait was exhibited, his personality was discussed. He was saluted as a leader of a new movement. But he turned his back on all this. Another self was shed; a voice within whispered the old burning "Beyond this"--drove him across the borderland of sanity, and into the chaos of unhuman desires.