One morning in March he entered, as was his custom, the little room which the philosopher occupied, to find him in bed notwithstanding the advanced hour. He made anxious enquiries. "I am ill," said Nietzsche; "I have just had my confinement." "What's that you say?" asked Lanzky, much perturbed. "The fourth part of _Zarathustra_ is written." * * * * * This fourth section does not enable us to discover at length an advance in the work, an attained precision of thought. It is merely a singular fragment, an "interlude," as Nietzsche called it. It illustrates a strange episode in the life of the hero, one which has disconcerted many a reader. We may perhaps best understand it if we consider the deception to which Nietzsche has just been subjected. The superior men go up to Zarathustra and surprise him in his mountainous solitude: an old pope, an old historian, an old king, unhappy beings who are suffering from their abasement and wish to ask succour of a sage whose strength they feel. Was it not thus that Stein, that distinguished young man, etiolated by Bayreuth, went to Nietzsche? Zarathustra admits these superior men to his presence, and keeping in check his savage humour, makes them sit down in his cave, is sorry for their disquietude, listens and talks to them. Was it not thus that Nietzsche had received Stein? Zarathustra's soul is in its depths less hard than it should be, and he allows himself to be seduced by the morbid charm and delicacy of the superior men; he takes pity on them and, forgetting that their misery is irremediable, yields to the pleasures of hope. He had looked for friends, and, perhaps, with these "superior men" they have come at last. Had not Nietzsche hoped for some help from Stein? Zarathustra leaves his friends for a moment, and ascends alone to the mountain. He returns to his cave to find the "superior men," all of them prostrate before a donkey. The aged pope is saying Mass before the new idol. In this posture Stein, interpreting a Wagnerian bible with two friends, had been surprised by Nietzsche. Zarathustra hunts his guests away, and calls for new workmen for a new world. But will he ever find them? "My children, my pure-blooded race, my beautiful new race; what is it that keeps my children upon their isles? "Is it not time, full time--I murmur it in thine ear, good spirit of the tempests,--that they should return to their father? do they not know that my hair grows gray and whitens in waiting? "Go, go, spirit of the tempests, indomitable and beneficent! Leave thy gorges and thy mountains, precipitate thyself upon the seas and bless my children before the night has come. "Bear them the benediction of my happiness, the benediction of that crown of happy roses! Let these roses fall upon their isles, let them remain fallen there, as a sign, which asks: 'Whence can such a happiness come?' . . . . . .