The heights which separate Bohemia from Franconia rise some miles from Bayreuth, and the village of Klingenbrunn, where Nietzsche retired, is situated in the forests which cover them. The crisis was brief and less severe than he had dreaded. Now that he had perceived in a clearer manner the dangers of the Wagnerian art, he saw the remedy more plainly. "Religiosity," he wrote, "when it is not upheld by a clear thought, rouses disgust." He renewed his Steinabad meditations and re-affirmed the resolutions then made. He would make a clean sweep of the past; resist the seductions of metaphysics; deprive himself of art; reserve judgment; like Descartes, begin by doubting. Then, if some new security could be discovered, he would raise the new grandeur on immovable foundations. He wandered up and down the silent forests; their severe peace was a discipline: "If we do not give firm and serene horizons to our souls like those of the woods and mountains," he wrote, "then our inner life will lose all serenity. It will be broken up like that of the men of towns; it will not know happiness and will not be able to give it." Then, all of a sudden he released the cry of his sick soul: "I shall give back to men," said he, "the serenity which is the condition of all culture. And the simplicity. _Serenity, Simplicity, Greatness!_" Nietzsche, once more master of himself, returned to Bayreuth without delay: he wished to complete his experience. The excitement of the crowd was even greater than on the day of his departure. The old Emperor William was present, on his way to the grand manœuvres. He had paid Wagner the compliment of being present on two evenings. From all Bavaria and Franconia, citizens and peasants had hurried hither to salute their Emperor, and there was almost a famine in the little invaded town. The performances began; Nietzsche heard them all. He listened in silence to the observations of the faithful and measured the abyss which he had so long skirted. He continued to see his friends: Fräulein von Meysenbug, Miss Zimmern, Gabriel Monod, E. Schuré, Alfred Brenner, who did not fail to notice in him a reserve and a silence singular at times. Often he went off alone, during the intervals or in the afternoons, with a pleasant and charming spectator, Madame O----, who was slightly Parisian, slightly Russian. He liked the delicate and surprising conversation of women, and he excused this one for being a Wagnerian.