Genoa was on his road, and there he stopped. The place charmed him at first sight. Its people were vigorous, frugal, and gay; the temperature, in November, almost that of summer. In Genoa was combined the double energy of mountain and of sea. Nietzsche liked those robust palaces that stood athwart the little streets. Such monuments had been raised by Corsair merchants to their own glory, by men whose instincts were fettered by no scruples. And his visionary spirit evoked them, for he stood in need of those Italians of a former time who were so lucid, so grasping, and who had in them so little of the Christian; who lied to others, but were frank towards themselves, without sophistry. He needed them in order to repress that romantic reverie which was not to be extinguished in him. He desired, like Rousseau, a return to nature. But Rousseau's Europe was one thing, and Nietzsche's another. Rousseau's offended against the sentiments of piety, against human sympathy, against goodness; Nietzsche's was a sluggish Europe under the domination of the herd, and it offended against other sentiments; very different, too, was the oppressed nature which he exalted and in which he sought the cure and the refreshment of his soul. He wished to make a stay at Genoa. After some trouble he found a perfect home: a garret, with a very good bed, at the top of a staircase of a hundred and four steps, in a house which looked out on a path so steep and stiff that no one passed that way, and that grass grew between the paving stones--Salita delle Battistine, 8. He arranged his life in a manner as simple as his domicile, and thus realised one of his many dreams. Often he used to say to his mother: "How do the common people live? I would like to live like them." His mother would laugh. "They eat potatoes and greasy meat; they drink bad coffee and alcohol...." Nietzsche sighed: "Oh, those Germans!" In his Genoese house, with its poor inmates, customs were different. His neighbours lived soberly. He imitated them and ate sparely; his thought was quicker and livelier. He bought a spirit lamp, and, under his land-lady's teaching, learnt how to prepare his own risotto, and fry his own artichokes. He was popular in the big house. When he suffered from headaches, he had many visitors, full of concern for him. "I need nothing," he would say, simply: "_Sono contento._"