Before the death of his father, in 1889, he returned to Belgium and lived there for seven years, continuing his studies of nature and metaphysics, writing marionette plays, and more serious dramas, and making translations from authors of other tongues, including English, that left impressions upon his mind. He declared that the three writers who exerted the strongest influence during these formative years were Emerson, Novalis, and Ruysbroeck, the medieval mystic whose writings were translated by Maeterlinck when he was a student at the Jesuit College. To visitors from America he delights to show his worn copy of Emerson. In his collected studies, _On Emerson and Other Essays_, translated by Montrose J. Moses, he summarizes the Concord philosopher’s thoughts about “the greatness of man’s spiritual nature, about the forces of the soul.” In conclusion of his vital influence, he writes: “Emerson has come to affirm simply this equal and secret grandeur of our life. He has encompassed us with silence and with wonder. He has placed a shaft of light beneath the feet of the workman as he leaves the workshop. He has shown us all the powers of heaven and earth, at the same time intent on sustaining the threshold on which two neighbors speak of the rain that falls or the wind that blows. And above these two passers-by who accost each other, he has made us see the countenance of God who smiles with the countenance of God. He is nearer than any other to our common life. He is the most attentive, the most assiduous, the most honest, the most scrupulous, and probably the most human of guides. He is the sage of commonplace days, and commonplace days are, in sum, the substance of our being.”[87] In 1896 Maeterlinck returned to Paris and there he has made his home. He refused to renounce his Belgian citizenship, however, that he might become a member of the French Academy; during the war he did valiant service in many ways for his native country. In his home town to-day, and at Brussels, the visitor is told of Belgian pride in Maeterlinck; the people say, “You know he has lived in Paris almost all his life but he is a true patriot, just the same.” To the years in Belgium, between 1889 and 1896, belong such plays as _The Blind_, _The Intruder_, _The Seven Princesses_, _Alladine and Palomides_ and _The Death of Tintagiles_. It is a question whether he has surpassed, in dramatic vigor combined with mystic beauty, that play of earlier period, _Pelléas and Mélisande_. Like the story of _Paolo and Francesca_, which it resembles in theme, it has an appealing quality both on the stage and in the book. The tragic death of Mélisande, after the murder of her lover and the birth of her daughter, reflects a high-light of dramatic power. The lines are simple in diction, masterly in structure and suggestion.