"I have recovered my good conscience," he wrote to Gersdorff a few days after his return; "I know that up to the present I have done all I could to enfranchise myself, and that in working thus, I have not worked for myself alone. I want to start off again on this road, and nothing more will stop me, neither memories, nor despairing presentiments. This is what I have discovered--the only thing that men respect and before which they bow, is a noble deed. Compromise, never! never! Profound success can only be assured by remaining faithful to oneself. I know already by experience what influence I exercise, and that if I became weaker or more sceptical, I should impoverish, besides my own, the hearts of many who develop with me." He needed a pride of this sort to confront the imminent crisis. The disciples of the master gave him a dinner, and Nietzsche, who did not want to be present, had to excuse himself. He wrote an impassioned letter of which Wagner comprehended perhaps the hidden signification. "Seven years ago, at Triebschen, I paid you my first visit. And every year, in this month of May, on this same day upon which we all celebrate the anniversary of your birth, I myself celebrate the anniversary of my spiritual birth. For since then, you live and work in me always like a drop of fresh blood that had as it were entered into my veins. This element that I owe to you urges me on, humiliates, encourages and stimulates me. It never allows me to rest, so much so that I should perhaps bear a grudge against you for this eternal disquietude if I did not know that it ever drives me on towards a freer and better state." Wagner answered him at once in a few exuberant lines. He told of the toasts drunk to his glory and of his humorous responses, with so many puns, cock-and-bull stories and impenetrable allusions, that it is necessary to give up the attempt to translate. Nietzsche was moved by this letter. At the moment it arrived he was feeling very much the master of himself, very sure of his future. The history of his past years suddenly appeared as a grand adventure that was now for ever closed. He considered it with an indulgent regard, and, measuring the joys he owed to Wagner, he wished to express his gratitude. The other summer, at Steinabad, when in a similar state of mind, he had filled some pages of notes. He took them up again, in spite of a nervous affection of the eyes which prevented him from working without help, and undertook to draw from them the substance of a volume. Singular attempt! Disillusioned, he wrote an enthusiastic book, the most beautiful in Wagnerian literature. But a forewarned reader recognises almost from page to page the idea that Nietzsche expresses in masking it. He writes the eulogy of the poet; of the philosopher he does not speak; he denies, for him who can understand, the educative bearing of the work.