Peter Gast also played the part of secretary, for Nietzsche had recovered his ardour for work. Day by day he dictated his thoughts. He chose, immediately, the title for a new collection (he gave up the idea quickly), _L'Ombra di Venezia._ Indeed, did he not owe to the presence of Venice this richness, this force, this subtlety of his mind? He essayed new researches. Was it true, as he had written, that a cold calculation of interest determines the actions of men? that a mean desire for safety, for ease, for happiness, had created that excessive beauty to which Venice stands witness? Venice is unique; nevertheless, she exists and must be explained. A spiritual portent must explain the physical marvel. What, then, are the hidden springs which determine our acts? Life, Schopenhauer used to say, is a pure _Will to Live;_ every being desires to persevere in being. We may go further, thinks Friedrich Nietzsche, and say that life aspires ever to extend and surpass itself. Its desire is, not conservation, but growth; a principle of conquest and of exaltation must be linked to its essence. How is this principle to be formulated? Nietzsche did not yet know; but the idea was with him, and importunate. He felt that he was on the eve of a discovery, on the threshold of an unknown world; and he wrote, or dictated, to his friend: "Actions are never what they appear to be. We have had such difficulty in learning that external things are not what they appear to us. Well, it is the same with the internal world! Deeds are in reality 'something other'--more we cannot say of them, and all deeds are essentially unknown." In July he tried the waters of Marienbad. He lived in a little inn, situated opposite the wood, where he walked all the length of the day. "I am absorbed, and excavate zealously in my moral mines," he wrote to Peter Gast, "and it seems to me that I have become an altogether subterranean being--it seems to me, at this moment, that I have found a passage, an opening; a hundred times I shall be thus persuaded and then deceived." In September he was at Naumburg; he seemed to be in a joyful and talkative humour; his sister Lisbeth recognised on his face that expression of cheerful sweetness which denotes good mental work, a plenitude and an afflux of thoughts. On the 8th of October, fearing the fogs, he descended towards Italy. He stopped at Stresa, on the shore of the Lake Maggiore. But the climate did not agree with his nerves, and unsettled his meditations. It was with terror that he recognised once more that the tyranny of external influences held him at its mercy. He took fright; could he, if he lived always in a state of suffering, express those innumerable ideas, philosophical and lyrical, which pressed on him? To acquire health was, he thought, his first duty. He left Stresa and travelled towards Sorrento.