On the 26th of April he arrived in Venice. Peter Gast found rooms for him not far from the Rialto, with windows that opened on the Grand Canal. He had not been in Venice for four years, and it was with a child's pleasure that he remade the acquaintance of the loved city. He stayed in the labyrinth of Venice; Venice--whose spirit is compounded of the magic of sun and water, the gracefulness of a gay and tactful people, and glimpses of unexpected gardens with flowers and mosses springing among the stones. "One hundred profound solitudes," he notes, "compose Venice--hence her magic. A symbol for the men of the future." For four or five hours every day he walked the little streets as he had walked the hills, sometimes isolating himself, sometimes moving with the Italian crowd. He was endlessly reflecting upon the difficulties of his task. What should he write next? He had thought of annotating some verses of his poem by means of a series of pamphlets, but then no one had read the words of Zarathustra. Those friends to whom they had been sent preserved a melancholy silence which constantly astonished him. A young author, Heinrich von Stein, was almost alone in sending him a word of warm congratulation. Nietzsche therefore gave up the idea, feeling that it would be ridiculous to comment upon a Bible which the public ignored. Very seriously he considered a "philosophy of the future." His intention was to give up, or at least to defer, further work on his poem; he would confine himself to long study--"five, six years of meditation and of silence, maybe"--and formulate his system in a precise and definite manner. Various projects were in his mind when, towards the middle of June, he left Venice for Switzerland. He wished first to read certain books on historical and natural science in the libraries of Basle, but his stay in that town was brief, for he found the heavy heat oppressive and his friends there failed to please him. Either they had not read _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ or they had read it very badly. "I might have been among cows," he wrote to Peter Gast, and returned to the Engadine. * * * * * On the 20th of August Heinrich von Stein wrote that he was coming.