"But I never suspected," she writes, "that any change had come over his sentiments, and I abandoned myself with a whole heart to the delights which came to complete those of Bayreuth. The joy I experienced in living in a like intimacy led me to quote one day, as we sat together at table, a thought from Goethe of which I was very fond: 'Happy he who, without hatred, withdraws from the world, presses a friend to his breast, and thus enjoys that something which men know not nor suspect, that which crosses the labyrinth of the heart at night.' The Wagners did not know this quotation, and were so enchanted with it that I had to repeat it to them. Alas! I did not guess that the demons who also cross the labyrinth of the heart at night and intimately contemplate the divine mystery of sympathy between noble minds, had already begun their work of sowing discord and division." Towards the end of November, Richard Wagner having left Sorrento, Fräulein von Meysenbug and her friends were able to regulate their lives with a view to study. They arranged the employment of their time: up to noon, work and solitude; at noon, breakfast; after breakfast, a walk and conversation; in the evening, work and solitude; at night, after dinner, reading. Paul Rée, the only healthy member in this society of invalid intellectuals, read aloud. Nietzsche and Fräulein von Meysenbug were short-sighted; Brenner's lungs were affected. Who were their authors? Jacob Burckhardt, whose course of lectures on Greek culture they were studying (a student of Basle had lent his notes); a little of Michelet; Herodotus; Thucydides. A question posed, a doubt expressed, sometimes interrupted Paul Rée's readings; and it was almost always Friedrich Nietzsche who concluded the short debate. "Nietzsche was indeed the soul of sweetness and kindliness!" writes Fräulein von Meysenbug in her charming account. "How well his good and amiable nature counterbalanced his destructive intelligence! How well he knew how to be gay, and to laugh with a good heart at the jokes which often came to disturb the serious atmosphere of our little circle. When we were together in the evening, Nietzsche comfortably installed in an arm-chair in the shade of a screen; Dr. Rée, our obliging reader, seated at the table on which the lamp was placed; young Brenner, near the chimney-piece opposite me, helping me to peel oranges for dinner; I often said, laughing: 'We represent truly an ideal family; here are we four people, who scarcely knew each other before, who are not united by any tie of relationship, who have no memories in common, and we now live together in absolute concord, in the most complete personal liberty, and in a perfect content of mind and heart.' So plans were soon sketched for the renewal and enlargement of this happy experience...."