The work is full of power; but Hölderlin abandons it. His melancholy enfeebles and exalts him. He wishes to leave Germany where he has suffered so much, and to free his relatives from the inconvenience of his presence. Employment is offered to him in France, at Bordeaux, and he disappears. Six months later he returns home sunburnt and in rags. He is questioned, but he does not reply. Enquiries are made and it is, with great difficulty, discovered that he had crossed France on foot under the August sun. His mind is gone, swallowed up in a torpor which is to last for forty years. He dies in 1843, a few months before the birth of Nietzsche. It might please a Platonist to think that the same genius passed from one body to the other. Surely the same German soul, romantic by nature, and classic in aspiration, broken at length by its desires, animated these two men, and predestined them to the same end. One seems to surprise across the tenor of their lives the blind labour of the race, which, pursuing its monotonous bent, sends into the world, from century to century, like children for like ordeals. That year, at the approach of summer, Nietzsche suffered severely from his head and eyes. The malady was uncertain in its nature, but possibly had its origin in the nerves. His holidays were spoilt. But he arranged to be able to stay at Naumburg until the end of August, and the joys of a prolonged leisure compensated him for previous vexations. * * * * * He returned to Pforta in a wholesome frame of mind. He had not resolved his doubts but he had explored them, and could without wronging himself become once more a laborious student. He was careful not to interrupt his reading, which was immense. From month to month he sent punctually to his two friends at Naumburg, poems, pieces of dance and song music, essays in criticism and philosophy. But these occupations were not allowed to interrupt his work as a student. Under the direction of excellent masters, he studied the languages and the literatures of antiquity. He would have been happy, had not the pressing questions of the future and of a profession begun to torment him.