"You admire Wagner? Who does not? As well as you and better than you have I known, revered, and hearkened to him. I learnt from him not the style of his art, but the style of his life--his valour and enterprise. I am aware that I have been accused of ingratitude, which is a word I ill understand. I have continued my work. In the best sense of the word, I am his disciple. You frequent Bayreuth, which is very agreeable for you, too agreeable. Wagner offers you for your delight all the legends, all the beliefs of the past--German, Celtic, pagan, and Christian. You should leave him for the same reason that I left him, because this delight is destructive to the spirit which seeks truth. Mark you, I say no word against art or religion. I believe that their day will be again. Not one of the old values will be abandoned. They will re-appear, transfigured no doubt, and more powerful and more intense, in a world thoroughly illuminated to its depths by science. We shall rediscover all the things that we loved in our childhood and in our adolescence, all that has upheld and exalted our fathers--a poetry, a goodness, the most sublime virtues, the humblest, too, each in its glory and its dignity. But we must accept the darkness, we must renounce and search. ... The possibilities are unheard of, but alone I am weak. Help me, therefore; stay or come back here, six thousand feet above Bayreuth!"[9] Stein listened. His diary reveals the growing vividness of his impressions: "24 viii. '84. Sils-Maria. Evening with Nietzsche. "27. His freedom of intellect, the imagery of his speech, a great impression. Snow and winter winds. Headaches. At night I watch him suffer. "29. He has not slept, but has all the ardour of a young man. A sunny and magnificent day!" After three days, the too-youthful emissary left, greatly moved by what had passed, and promising to rejoin Nietzsche at Nice, as the latter, at least, understood. Nietzsche felt that he had greatly carried the day. "Such an encounter as ours must have an early and far-reaching importance," he wrote to Stein a few days after his departure. "Believe me, you now belong to that little band whose fate, for good or ill, is linked to mine." Stein answered that the days at Sils-Maria were to him a great memory, a grave and solemn moment of his life; and then, rather prudently, went on to speak of the binding conditions imposed on him by his works and his profession. What he did _not_ say was, "Yes, I am yours." Was Nietzsche's mind open enough to perceive the reservation? One cannot tell. He was making marvellous plans, and dreamt anew of an "ideal cloister." To Fräulein von Meysenbug he made the naïve proposal that she should come to Nice and spend the winter near him. * * * * *