In these moments of depression he was always seized by memories of Wagner, and of the almost serene existence that he had tasted in his intimacy. The glory of the master, a moment faded, went on increasing; the public bowed before success, and Nietzsche, who had fought in the difficult times, had now to stand aside in the hour of triumph. The idea that the art of Wagner was within his reach, always offering the miracle of its "fifteen enchanted worlds "; the idea that Wagner himself was there, offering himself also, ever genial, abundant, laughing, tender, sublime, caressing, and like a god creating life around him: the idea that he had possessed so much beauty, and that, with a little cowardice, he could possess it again, and that never, never again would he possess it; this was an everlasting sadness to Nietzsche. Finally, giving way to his need of an outlet, he wrote to the one comforter, to Wagner. Like all his other letters to Wagner, this letter is lost, or destroyed; but the tone of the letter which we are about to quote, the tone of Wagner's reply, helps us to imagine its eloquence. Wagner answered: "DEAR FRIEND,--Your letter has again made us most anxious on your account. Presently, my wife will write more fully than I. But I have just a quarter of an hour's rest, and I want--to your great annoyance possibly--to devote it to posting you up in what we say of you here. It seems to me, amongst other things, that never have I had in my life such intellectual society as you get in Basle, to amuse you in the evenings. However, if you are all hypochondriacs, it is not a great benefit, I admit. It is, I think, women that you need, you young men of to-day. There is a difficulty, as I well know: as my friend Sulzer used to say, 'Where take women without stealing them?' Besides, one could steal at a pinch. I mean to say you ought to marry, or compose an opera; one would be as good, or as bad, as the other. All the same, I hold that marriage is the better. "In the meanwhile, I could recommend you a palliative, but you always settle your _régime_ in advance, so that one can say nothing to you. For example: our household here is so organised that we have a place such as was never offered me in the most difficult moments of my life, here for you: you should come and spend all the summer holidays;--but very prudently, you announced to us, at the beginning of winter, that you had resolved to pass the summer holidays on a very high and very solitary mountain in Switzerland! Does that not look like very careful guarding against a possible invitation? We could be useful to you in some directions: why do you despise that which is offered you in such good part? Gersdorff and all the society of Basle would be happy here: a thousand things are to be seen: I pass in review all my singers of the _Nibelungen;_ the decorator decorates, the machinist machines; and then we are there, in flesh and blood. "But one knows the eccentricities of friend Nietzsche!