Even without Wagner, Nietzsche's correspondents are numerous and varied, as many and of as many kinds as a wise man needs, if he chooses to make the most of them. The lonely philosopher was not neglected as man and brother. He preferred to flock by himself. His ill health rather than the animosity of his countrymen drove him out of Germany; and he was happiest, as close as he ever came to happiness, when he concentrated his energy in his work. He makes a philosophic virtue of necessity, affects to despise what he can not have, laments his solitude and is proud of it. To his sister he writes: You can not think how lonely and out of it I always feel when I am in the midst of all the kindly Tartufferie of those people whom you call 'good,' and how intensely I yearn at times for a man who is honest and who can talk even if he were a monster, but of course I should prefer discourse with demi-gods.... Oh, this infernal solitude! A few months later, when this aged philosopher is forty, he writes to an old friend that all the people he loves belong to the past and regard him with merely merciful indulgence. We see each other, we talk in order to avoid being silent--we still write each other in order to avoid being silent. Truth, however, glances from their eyes, and these tell me (I hear it well enough): 'Friend Nietzsche, you are now quite alone!' That's what I have lived and fought for! The last sentence may be taken in two ways. It may mean that Nietzsche strove for isolation, or it may be interpreted bitterly: "So _that's_ what I get from my friends for all my labor and struggle!" Perhaps both meanings are there. The letter ends: "Ah, dear friend, what an absurdly silent life I lead! So much alone, so much alone! So 'childless'! Remain fond of me; I am truly fond of you." That sounds like a not too human cry of hunger for affection. The man who prefers demi-gods and is confident that he would be worthy of their companionship is not immune from the pangs of ordinary mortals.