He was discouraged and ceased to write; he left his luggage at the station with the books and manuscripts which he had brought: one hundred and four kilos of paper. Everything in Rome harassed him: the nasty people, a mob of illegitimates; the priests, whom he could not tolerate; the churches, "caverns with unsavoury odours." His hatred of Catholicism is instinctive and has far-off origins; always when he approaches it, he shudders. It is not the philosopher who judges and reproves; it is the son of the pastor, who has remained a Lutheran: who cannot endure the other Church, full of incense and idols. The desire came to him to leave this town. He heard the beauty of Aquila praised. Friedrich von Hohenstaufen, the Emperor of the Arabs and the Jews, the enemy of the popes, resided there; Friedrich Nietzsche wished to reside there, too. Still, the room which he occupied was a fine and well-situated one, Piazza Barberini, at the very top of a house. There one could forget the town: the murmur of water falling from a triton's horn stilled the noise of humanity and sheltered his melancholy. There it was that, one evening, he was to improvise the most poignant expression of his despair and solitude: "I am light; alas if I were night! But this is my solitude, to be always surrounded by light. "Alas that I am not shadow and gloom! How I would drink from the breasts of light! "... But I live in my own light, I drink the flames which escape from me!" _Thus Spake Zarathustra, a Book for All and None,_ at last appeared during the first days of June. "I am very much on the move," wrote Nietzsche. "I am in agreeable society, but as soon as I am alone I feel moved as I have never been." He soon knew the fate of his book. His friends spoke to him very little of it; the newspapers, the reviews, did not mention it; no one was interested in this Zarathustra, the strange prophet who in a biblical tone taught unbelief. "How bitter it is!" said Lisbeth Nietzsche and Fräulein von Meysenbug; these two women, Christians at heart that they were, took offence. "And I," wrote Nietzsche to Peter Gast, "I who find my book so gentle!" The heat dispersed this Roman society. Friedrich Nietzsche knew not where to go. He had hoped for such different days! He had been persuaded that he would move lettered Europe, that he would at last attract readers to himself, or (more precisely perhaps) that he would attract, not towards his feeble self, but towards Zarathustra, who was so strong, disciples or even servitors. "For this summer," he wrote in May to Peter Gast, "I have a project: to choose, in some forest, some castle formerly fitted up by the Benedictines for their meditations, and to fill it with companions, chosen men ... I must go on a quest for new friends." About the 20th June, thunderstruck by the loss of his hopes, he went up towards his favourite retreat, the Engadine.