"The sky is beautiful, worthy of Nice, and this has lasted for days," he wrote to Peter Gast on September 30th. "My sister is with me, and it is very agreeable for us to be doing each other good when for so long we had been doing harm only. My head is full of the most extravagant lyrics that ever haunted a poet's skull. I have had a letter from Stein. This year has brought me many good things, and one of the most precious of its gifts has been Stein, a new and a sincere friend. "In short, let us be full of hope; or we may better express it by saying with old Keller-- "'Trinkt, O Augen, was die Wimper hält Von dem goldnen Ueberfluss der Welt! '" Brother and sister left Zürich, the one bound for Naumburg, the other for Nice. On the way Nietzsche stopped at Mentone. Hardly had he settled down there than he wrote: "This is a magnificent place. I have already discovered eight walks. I hope that no one will join me. I need absolute quiet." It is possible that the project which he had formed at the beginning of the summer, when he spoke of six years of meditation and of silence, was again in his mind. But he lacked the force of will which long and silent meditation demands. He was, however, deeply moved by the hope of a friend and by the loss of a sister, and his lyric impatience broke the bonds. Yielding to instinct he composed poems off-hand--songs, short stanzas, epigrams. Practically all the poems which are to be found in his later works--the light verse, the biting distich, inserted in the second edition of the _Gaya Scienza,_ the grandiose Dionysian chants--were finished or conceived during these few weeks. And once more he began to think of the still incomplete _Thus Spake Zarathustra._ "A fourth, a fifth, a sixth part are inevitable," he writes. "Whatever happens I must bring my son Zarathustra to his noble end. Alive, he leaves me no peace." At the end of October Nietzsche left Mentone. The sight of so many invalids disturbed him, and he set out for Nice. * * * * *