"It seems then that I am not very well advanced in the art of knowing men. That furnishes you no doubt with matter for mockery. What a fool you have made of me! Bravo! As regards men of your stamp, rather than understand them, I had rather they mocked me. "I would have great pleasure in giving you a lesson in practical morals with a pair of pistols; I would succeed perhaps, under the most favourable circumstances, in interrupting once and for all your works on morals: one needs clean hands for that, Dr. Paul Rée, not dirty ones!" This letter cannot be considered sufficient to condemn Paul Rée. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote it in a moment of anger upon information given by his sister, who was often more impassioned than accurate. It is a precious witness to his impression; to the ill-known data of the cause, it is a mediocre witness. What was the conduct of Paul Rée? What were the rights and wrongs? In April, 1883, six months after the difficulties of Leipsic, he had offered Nietzsche the dedication of a work on the origins of the moral conscience, a work altogether inspired by Nietzschean ideas. Nietzsche had refused this public compliment: "I no longer want," he wrote to Peter Gast, "to be confounded with any one." A letter written by George Brandes in 1888 shows us Paul Rée living in Berlin with Miss Salomé, as "brother and sister," according to both their accounts. There is no doubt that Rée helped Miss Salomé, towards 1883, to write her book on Friedrich Nietzsche: a very intelligent and a very noble book. We incline to believe that between these two men there was only the misfortune of a common love which the same woman inspired in them. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote long and febrile letters. He complained of being alone at forty years, betrayed by his friends. Franz Overbeck grew anxious and went up to Sils-Maria to distract him from the solitude which wounded and consumed him. His sister, a prudent lady, and bourgeois in her tastes, advised him in answer to his complaints: "You are alone, it is true," said she to him; "have you not sought solitude? Get an appointment in some University: when you have a title and pupils, you will be recognised and people will cease to ignore your books." Nietzsche listened indulgently, but did listen, and wrote to the Rector of Leipsic, who, without hesitation, dissuaded him from making any overtures, no German University being in a position to allow an atheist, a declared anti-Christian, among its teachers. "This reply has given me courage!" wrote Nietzsche to Peter Gast; to his sister he sent a strong letter whose thrusts she felt.