"Let us avow it," he writes to his friend, the Baron von Gersdorff, "we are all, with all our past, responsible for the terrors which menace us to-day. We shall do wrong, if we consider with a peaceful conceit the unchaining of a war against culture, and if we impute the fault merely to the unfortunates who do the deed. When I heard of the firing of Paris, I was for some days utterly powerless, lost in tears and doubts; the life of science, of philosophy and of art appeared to me as an absurdity when I saw a single day suffice for the ruin of the finest works of art; what do I say?--of entire periods of art. I profoundly deplored the fact that the metaphysical value of art could not manifest itself to the lower classes; but it has a higher mission to fulfil. Never, however lively my affliction were, would I have cast the stone at the sacrilegious, who in my eyes are only carriers of the mistake of all--a mistake which gives cause for much thought...." In the autobiographical notes written in 1878 these words may be read: "The War: my profoundest affliction, the burning of the Louvre." * * * * * Friedrich Nietzsche had gone back to his old way of life; almost every week he was Wagner's guest. But soon he perceived that since the German victory Triebschen had changed. Too many intimates made haste to the master's house, too many unknown people invaded the abode whose peaceful seclusion he had loved. They were not all of the sort that Nietzsche would have desired; but Wagner talked, discoursed, overflowed with them all. Judging that the favourable moment had come, he had set out to rouse Germany and secure at last the construction and gift of the hall which he needed, the theatre, or the temple, of Bayreuth. Friedrich Nietzsche heard and took part in these discussions with an uneasy ardour. Wagner's idea exalted him. But he had the soul of a solitary, and could not help being worried, and sometimes shocked, by these noises from the world which had to be tolerated. Wagner did not suffer: on the contrary, he seemed elated by the joy of feeling the crowd nearer to him; and Nietzsche, a little surprised, a little disappointed, sought, without precisely finding again, his hero. "To sway the people," he had written in his student notebooks, "is to put passions in the service of an idea." Wagner adapted himself to work of this kind. In the service of his art and of his fame he accepted all the passions. A Chauvinist with the Chauvinists, an idealist with the idealists, as much of a Gallophobe as was desired; restoring the Æschylian tragedy for some, for others re-animating the old German myths; willingly a pessimist, a Christian if it pleased, sincere moreover from moment to moment, this prodigious being, a great leader of men as well as a great poet, handled his compatriots most dexterously.