"There's an admirable woman, marry her." "No," answered Rée; "I am a pessimist, and the idea of propagating human life is odious to me. Marry her yourself; she is the companion that you want...." Nietzsche dismissed this idea. Perhaps he said to his friend, as he had said to his sister: "I marry! Never, I would have to be a bar somewhere or other." Miss Salomé's mother examined these two men who were so attentive to her child; Friedrich Nietzsche perplexed her; she preferred Paul Rée. The two friends and the two philosophers stopped at Lucerne. Friedrich Nietzsche wished to show his new friend that house at Triebschen where he had known Richard Wagner. Who was not then thinking of the master? He brought her as far as the poplars whose high foliage enclosed the gardens. He recounted to her the unforgettable days, the gaieties, the magnificent angers of the great man. Seated by the border of the lake, he talked in a low, contained voice, and turned his face a little away, for it was troubled by the memory of those joys of which he had deprived himself. Suddenly he grew silent, and the young girl, observing him, saw that he wept. He confessed all his life to her; his childhood, the pastor's house, the mysterious grandeur of the father who had been so quickly taken away; the pious years, the first doubts, and the horror of this world without a God in which one must resolve to live; the discovery of Schopenhauer and of Wagner, the religious feeling which they had inspired in him and which had consoled him for the loss of his faith. "Yes," said he (Miss Salomé reports these words), "my adventures began in this manner. They are not ended. Where will they lead me? Whither shall I adventure again? Should I not come back to the faith? to some new belief?" He added gravely: "In any case a return to the past is more likely than immobility." Friedrich Nietzsche had not yet avowed his love; but he felt its force and no longer resisted. Only he feared to declare himself. He begged Paul Rée to speak in his name, and withdrew. On the 8th of May, settled for some days in Basle, he saw the Overbecks and confided in them with a strange exaltation. A woman has come into his life; it is a happiness for him; it will benefit his thought, which will henceforward be livelier, richer in its shades and emotion. Assuredly he would prefer not to marry Miss Lou, he disdains all fleshly ties; but perhaps he ought to give her his name for her protection against scandalmongers, and from this spiritual union would be born a spiritual son: the prophet Zarathustra. He is poor; this is a vexation, an obstacle. But could he not sell all his future work in a lump to some publisher for a considerable sum? He thought of doing so. These out-bursts did not fail to trouble the Overbecks, who augured ill of a liaison so bizarre and of an enthusiasm so ready.