Paris was deserted for Lausanne. In a little châlet by the shore of the lake he recovered physical strength and mental poise. The sight of the Alps acted as a tonic to his nervous system, and solitary morning walks on the shore brought him the stillness of mind out of which new faith is moulded. The way to Rousseau was straight and easy; the peace of Nature, the sinlessness, the simplicity of the peasant's life, as compared with the vitiated conditions of town labour, impressed themselves on his thought. The diseases of mind and body, caused by the unnatural oppression of civilisation, were amenable to treatment, more practical than satire, and more human than the loathing with which he had decried the false gods and the vulgar tyrants. The remedies were to be found in a combined "return to Nature," and reorganisation of the conditions of labour. Socialism, internationalism, the theories of a broad and humanitarian outlook upon industrial processes of development which tend towards a more equal distribution of wealth and power, now fed Strindberg's hunger after social righteousness. He attempted to throw off national limitations; to feel and act as a European with pan-national sympathies and interests. The peace movement presented itself to him as one of the greatest thoughts of the time. In his youth he had felt at one with the proletariat, trampled down by the hoofs of militarism. In his satirical writings the peacocks of the social fowl-yard--the proud bearers of epaulets and tinsel--had received a full share of his attention. In Switzerland he came into contact with the organised peace movement, and the result was the novel _Remorse_, a powerful analysis of the mental torture endured by a German officer who in obeying orders has caused three innocent Frenchmen to be shot. The inhumanity of war and the reality of human brotherhood are here presented in a manner which makes the story a stirring, yet delicately artistic appeal against the horrors of the battlefield. Whilst he thus placed himself in the ranks of the world's peace-makers the struggle with the sex-problem, from which he never wholly escaped, developed into a battle, the noise of which was destined to reverberate through his whole life. During the summer of 1884--whilst exposed to the unromantic surroundings of a Swiss mountain _pensionnat_--he wrote twelve stories of married life, to which he gave the innocuous title _Married_. They were published in Stockholm in September by Herr Bonnier, and had the effect of a bomb thrown amidst sleepy and contented people--contented to be rid of the enemy. The book was eagerly read by everyone, by the high priests of morality as well as by libertines; it sent shudders of indignation through the respectability which covers vice and sin with silence, and called forth shouts of delight from the champions of "free" morals. It was denounced as indecent, and as a grave danger to the youth of Sweden by representatives of religion and education.