"Where are they, those old friends, with whom I formerly felt so closely bound? We inhabit different worlds, we no longer speak the same tongue! As a stranger, a proscribed man, I wander among them; never a word, never a look now reaches me. I hold my peace--for none understands my speech--ah, I can say it, they have never understood me! ... It is terrible to be condemned to silence, when one has so many things to say. Am I created for solitude, never to find any one with whom I may make myself understood? Incommunicability is in truth the most awful of solitudes, to be _different,_ to wear a mask of brass harder than any mask of brass--perfect friendship is only possible _inter pares. Inter pares!_ a phrase which intoxicates me: what confidence, what hope, what perfume, what beatitude it promises the man who necessarily and constantly lives alone; to a man who is _different_--who has never met any one of his race. And nevertheless he is a good seeker; he has sought much. Ah, the swift folly of those hours in which the solitary thinks he has found a friend, embraces him and holds him in his arms; it is a present from heaven, an inestimable gift. An hour later he rejects him with disgust, he rejects himself with disgust, as though soiled, diminished, sick from his own society. A _profound_ man needs friends, unless indeed he has a God. And I have neither God nor friend! Ah, my sister, those whom you call by this name, once they were friends--but now? "Excuse this burst of passion; my last journey is the cause.... "My health is neither good nor bad; it is only the poor soul which is wounded and thirsting. Give me a little circle of men who will listen to me and understand--and I am in good health. "Here everything takes its course; the two English-women and the old Russian lady, the musician, have come back; the latter very ill...." Nietzsche now went on with his labours on the _Wille zur Macht._ His unfortunate passage through Germany had modified his arrangements. He thought: "What use is it my writing warlike books? Without allies, without readers, I cannot prevent the abasement of Europe; let it be brought about then. One day it will find its goal--a day which I shall not see. Then my books will be discovered, then I shall have my readers. For them I should write, for them I should determine my fundamental ideas. To-day, I cannot fight, for I have not enemies even...." At the beginning of July, when leaving the Germany which had tried him so hardly, he drew up a detailed plan. In September he wrote: "I announce, for the next four years, the completion of my work in four volumes. The title alone is alarming: _The Will to Power, an essay towards a Transvaluation of all Values._ For this all is necessary to me--health, solitude, good humour--perhaps a wife _(eine Frau)_ also."