He retired, then returned; again and again he was recalled. Nietzsche watched his master standing in the limelight, and he alone in the hall did not applaud. "There he is," he thought, "_my ally._.. the Homer who has been fertilised by Plato...." The curtain fell for the last time, and Nietzsche, silent, lost in the crowd, followed his tide like a wreck. [1] "Ein Zwillingspaar von einem Haus, Gieng muthig in die Welt hinaus, Welt--Drachen zu zerreissen. Zwi'r Väter--Werk! Ein Wunder war's! Die Mutter doch des Zwillingpaars Freundschaft ist sie geheissen." [2] _Mahnruf._ CHAPTER V CRISIS AND CONVALESCENCE Friedrich Nietzsche returned to Basle. His eyesight was feeble and painful, so that he had to accept the help which two friends offered him: one of them was a young student named Köselitz, whom he had jokingly called _Peter Gast, Peter the Guest_--the surname stuck to him; the other was that Paul Rée, the Jew, with the acute mind, whom he had known for two years. Thanks to their devotion he was able to re-read the notes written at Klingenbrunn; he hoped to find matter in them for the second "Unseasonable Thought." Paul Rée was then publishing his _Psychological Observations,_ reflections inspired by the English and French masters, Stuart Mill and La Rochefoucauld. Friedrich Nietzsche heard this little work read, and appreciated it. He admired this prudent style of conducting thought; he enjoyed it on the morrow of the emphatic ceremonies of Bayreuth, as though it were a repose; and he resolved to study at the school of Rée and of his masters. Nevertheless he always felt the immense void which his renouncement of Richard Wagner left in him. "At this moment," he wrote, the 20th September, 1876, "I have every leisure to think of the past--farthest and nearest--for my oculist makes me sit idle for long periods in a darkened room. Autumn, after such a summer, is for me, and no doubt not only for me, more _autumn_ than any other. After the great event comes an attack of blacker melancholy, and to escape it one cannot fly too quickly towards Italy or towards work, or towards both." He had obtained the leave for which he had asked, and the sole gladness which he had in life was the certainty that he would be free for some months from all professional duties. He left Switzerland at the end of October. Alfred Brenner and Paul Rée accompanied him. The three Germans went down towards Genoa, and thence took a steamer to Naples, where Fräulein von Meysenbug was expecting them.