Friedrich Nietzsche had the faculty of occasionally rising above his own sorrows and his own joys. He knew how to enjoy the spectacle of his crises as though they were the intermingled voices of a symphony. Then he ceased to suffer, and contemplated with a sort of mystical rapture the tragic development of his existence. Such was his life during the few weeks of his cure at Steinabad. It brought him nevertheless no motive of happiness. His illness resisted remedies, and the doctors let him guess, as at the origin of all these attacks, an identical, indiscernible, and mysterious cause. He did not forget the nature of the illness that had killed his father at thirty-six years of age. He took the hint and felt the danger: but he even brought this menace into the spectacle of his life and considered it bravely. Steinabad is near Bayreuth; Nietzsche was once more tempted. Would he go, or would he stay? This indecision was enough, he broke down utterly. Towards the end of July, a terrible attack which kept him two days in bed did away with these doubts. On the first of August he wrote to Rohde: "To-day, dear friend, if I am not mistaken, you are all meeting at Bayreuth. And I am not among you. In vain have I obstinately believed that I could all of a sudden emerge in your society and enjoy my friends. In vain; to-day, my cure being half completed, I say it with certainty...." The attack lost its force; he was able to get up and walk in the woods. He had brought a _Don Quixote_ with him: he read this book, "the bitterest of all," with its derision of every noble effort.