"I hope to bring back from Bayreuth courage and gaiety, and to strengthen myself in everything that is good. I dreamt last night that I was having my _Gradus ad Parnassum_ carefully rebound. This mixture of bookbinding and symbolism is comprehensible; moreover, very insipid. But it is a truth! It is necessary from time to time to rebind ourselves by frequenting men more valorous and stronger than ourselves or else we lose a few of our pages, then a few more, still a few more, until the last page is destroyed. And that our life should be a _Gradus ad Parnassum,_ that also is a truth that we must often repeat to ourselves. The future to which I shall attain if I take plenty of trouble, if I have a little happiness and much time, is to become a more sober writer, and from the first and ever better to pursue my calling as a man of letters more soberly. From time to time I feel a childish repugnance to printed paper, I think that I see soiled paper. And I can very well picture a period when reading was not much liked, writing even less so; but one far preferred to think a lot, and to act still more. For everything to-day awaits that efficacious man, who, condemning in himself and us our millenarian routines, will live better and will give us his life to imitate." Friedrich Nietzsche left for Bayreuth. * * * * * He there learnt a piece of unexpected news. Money was lacking. Of the twelve hundred thousand francs needed, eight hundred thousand only had been realised with great difficulty. The enterprise was compromised and perhaps ruined. Everyone was losing heart. The master alone was confident and calm. Since he had attained his manhood, he had desired to possess a theatre. He knew that a constant will prevails over chance, and a few months of crisis did not alarm him after forty years of waiting. Capitalists from Berlin, Munich, Vienna, London, and Chicago were making proposals to him which Richard Wagner invariably refused to entertain. He wished his theatre to belong to himself alone, and to be near him: "It is not a question of the success of the affair," he said, "but of awakening the hidden forces of the German soul." But his remarkable serenity failed to reassure his friends. A panic was engendered at Bayreuth, and no one again dared to hope.