"_Sich des halben zu entwohnen und im Ganzen, Vollen, Schönen resolut zu leben_" (To abjure half-measures, and to live resolutely in the Whole, the Full, the Beautiful). Friedrich Nietzsche never forgot the energetic maxim, nor the man who had transmitted it to him, nor this day of rapid and healthful travel, not far from those summits which he was afterwards to love so much. The fine mountain crossing amid the snow and silence of the Alps had sufficed. He was almost cured on his arrival at Lugano. His nature was still supple and youthful; his returns to life were prompt and radiant; a naïve gaiety re-animated all his being. He spent two happy months in Italian Switzerland. A Prussian officer, a relation of General von Moltke, was staying at his hotel. He lent him his manuscripts and often talked to him of the destinies of the new German Empire and of the aristocratic warrior's mission which the victory had conferred upon it. It was a fine springtide for the numerous Germans who had come to rest at the place: they liked to gather round their young philosopher and listen to him. February began, the war was over, and these happy people, freed from all anxieties, abandoned themselves for the first time to the pleasure of their triumph. They sang; they danced in public up to the Market-place, and Nietzsche was not the least prompt to rejoice with them, to dance and sing. "When I recall these days," writes Madame Förster-Nietzsche, who gives us a sad and gracious account of the time, "it seems to me that I am having a veritable dream of Carnival." From Lugano, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to Erwin Rohde: