"Nietzsche is really going to-morrow," she wrote to Rée; "you know that when he is thus determined upon something he carries it out, even though the sky sends the most serious warnings to turn him from it. In that he is no longer a Greek, as he is not attentive to oracles. Just as, in the most frightful weather, he starts out on an excursion, so now he goes, tired to death, in defiance of the raging wind which is lashing up the sea, and will certainly make him ill, for he is determined to make the voyage from Naples to Genoa by sea." "Yes, he has gone," she wrote in another letter. "The charm of Sorrento in flower could not keep him; he must go, but it is horribly painful to me to let him travel thus; he is unpractical and so bad at extricating himself from a difficulty. Luckily the sea is a little calmer to-day.... Alas, there is so much to regret! Eight days ago we had sketched plans for his near and distant future. Was his brusque resolution dictated by a feverish desire to fly from his malady, which he suddenly fancied had some connection with our spring temperature, which is truly a little abnormal? But how could he have been any better elsewhere this miserable spring? I think that at the last moment it occurred to him that his departure was nevertheless precipitate. But it was too late.... This melancholy multiplication of departures has quite upset me...." * * * * * Friedrich Nietzsche went to take a cure at the waters of Rosenlaui. He experienced very little benefit from it, and his immediate future preoccupied his thoughts. In September he had to resume his professorial duties. It was his daily bread, and a daily discipline from which he feared to be freed. But he also knew the horrible ennui of it. He had been given reason to hope that the authorities at Basle would consent to grant him, in consideration of his services and of his illness, a definite discharge with a sufficient pension. Fräulein von Meysenbug advised him to retire; his sister, on the contrary, advised him to retain his office, and Nietzsche chose to listen to his sister. But the nearer came the date of his return, the more lively grew his revolt.