[2] This intimate history has never been known except to a few people, who are now, for the most part, out of our ken. Two women survive: one, Frau Förster-Nietzsche, has published some accounts which one would wish were more lucid and tranquil; the other, Miss Salomé, has written a book on Friedrich Nietzsche in which some facts are indicated and some letters cited; she has refused to enter into polemics on a subject which, as she considers, concerns herself alone. Oral traditions are numerous and contradictory. Some, rife in Roman society, where the adventure took place, are less favourable to Miss Salomé; she appears as a sort of Marie Bashkirtseff, an intellectual adventuress who was somewhat too enterprising. Others, rife in Germany among Miss Salomé's friends, are very different. We have heard all these traditions. The first have influenced the account which we have given in the _Cahiers de la quinzaine,_ the second volume of the tenth series, pp. 24 _et seq._; the second, which we learned later, we now prefer. But all hope of certainty must be adjourned. [3] "Da ist eine Seele welche sich mit einen Hauch eine Körperchen geschaffen hat." [4] The _y_ in the word _Gaya_ does not seem to be Italian. We follow Nietzsche's orthography. [5] "Who that hath once been seized by thee can fly, if he hath felt thy grave look turned on him? I shall not save myself, if thou takest me, I shall never believe thou dost naught but destroy. Yea, thou must visit all that liveth upon earth, nothing upon earth can evade thy grip: life without thee--it were beautiful, yet--thou too art worthy to be lived." II _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ His departure was prompt, like a flight. He passed through Basle and stopped with his friends the Overbecks, who listened to his plaint. He had awakened from his last dream; everyone had betrayed him: Lou, Rée, feeble and perfidious; Lisbeth, his sister, who had acted grossly. Of what betrayal did he complain, and of what act? He did not say, and continued his bitter complaints. The Overbecks wished him to stay with them for some days. He escaped them; he wished to work, and surmount alone the sadness of having been deceived, the humiliation of having deceived himself. Perhaps he also wished to put to profit that condition of paroxysm and the lyrical _sursum_ whither his despair had carried him. He left. "To-day," said he to his friends, "I enter into a complete solitude."