He wished to bring back, to convince his friend, but no discussion was possible. Romundt did not answer and held to his resolve. He left on the fixed date. Nietzsche wrote to Gersdorff, and related the story of this departure. "It was horribly sad: Romundt knew, repeated endlessly that henceforward he had lived the better and the happier part of his life. He wept a great deal and asked our forgiveness. He could not hide his misery. At the last moment I was seized with a veritable terror; the porters were shutting the carriage doors, and Romundt, wishing to continue speaking to us, wanted to let down the window, but it stuck; he redoubled his efforts, and while he tormented himself thus, hopelessly trying to make himself heard, the train went out slowly, and we were reduced to making signs to each other. The awful symbolism of the whole scene upset me terribly, and Overbeck as much as it did me (he confessed as much to me later): it was hardly endurable; I stayed in bed the next day with a bad headache that lasted thirty hours, and much vomiting of bile." This day of illness marked the beginning of a very long attack. Nietzsche was obliged to leave Basle and to repose in the solitude of the mountains and woods. "I wander always alone," he writes, "clearing up many thoughts." What were these thoughts? We can ascertain them. "Send me a comforting message," he wrote to Rohde: "that your friendship may help me better to support this terrible affair. It is in my sentiment of friendship that I am hurt. I hate more than ever that insincere and hypocritical way of being a man of many friendships, and I will have to be more circumspect in the future."