Friedrich Nietzsche is moved by these opposing voices, by these rhythms of thought which accuse nature in their eternal collisions. "The vicissitudes of the ideas and systems of man affect me more tragically than the vicissitudes of real life," said Hölderlin. Nietzsche's feeling was the same. He admired and envied those primitives who discovered nature and who found the first answers. He threw aside the devices of art, he confronted life as Œdipus confronted the Sphinx, and under this very title _Œdipus_ he wrote a fragment to the mysterious language of which we may open our ears. _Œdipus._ I call myself the last philosopher because I am the last man. I speak alone and I hear my voice sounding like that of a dying man. With thee, dear voice, whose breath brings to me the last memories of all human happiness, with thee let me speak yet a moment more: thou wilt deceive my solitude; thou wilt give me back the illusion of society and love, because my heart will not believe that love is dead. It cannot endure the terror of the most solitary solitude, and forces me to speak as if I were two. Is it thou that I hear, my voice? Thou murmurest, and thou cursest? Yet--thy malediction should rend the entrails of the world! Alas, in spite of everything it subsists, more dazzling and colder than ever; it looks at me with its stars pitilessly; it exists blind and deaf as before, and nothing dies but man. And yet, you still speak to me, beloved voice! I die not alone in this universe. I, the last man: the last plaint, your plaint, dies with me. Misery, misery! pity me, the last man of misery, Œdipus! It seems that Nietzsche, now at the extreme limits of his thought, experiences a sudden need of rest. He wants to speak to his friends, to feel himself surrounded by them and diverted. The Easter holidays in 1873 gave him a fortnight's release. He left for Bayreuth, where he was not expected. "I leave this evening," he writes to Fräulein von Meysenbug. "Guess where I am going? You've guessed, and, height of bliss, I shall meet the best of men, Rohde, to-morrow at half-past four. I shall be staying with Wagner, and then see me quite happy! We shall speak much of you, much of Gersdorff. He has copied my lectures, you say? It touches me, and I will not forget it. What good friends I have! It is really shameful.