In July, in the Engadine, some damp and cold weeks did him a great deal of harm. He lost his sleep. His happy excitement disappeared, or transformed itself into bitter and febrile humours. It was then that Fräulein von Salis-Marschlins, who has recounted her recollections in an interesting brochure, saw him, after a separation of ten months. She remarked the change in his condition; how he walked alone, his hurried carriage, his sharp salute--he would stop scarcely or not at all, in such a hurry was he to get back to his inn and put down the thoughts which his walk had inspired in him. On the visits he paid her he did not conceal his preoccupations. He was in dread of pecuniary embarrassments: the capital which had constituted his little fortune was almost gone; and could he, with the three thousand francs which the University of Basle allowed him as a pension, provide for his everyday needs and for the publication, always onerous, of his books? It was in vain that he regulated his journeys and restricted himself to the simplest lodgings and food. He was reaching the limits of his resources. _The Case of Wagner_ was completed; to the text, a preliminary discourse, a postscript, a second postscript, and an epilogue were added. He could not cease extending his work, and making it more bitter. Nevertheless he was not satisfied, and felt, after having written it, some remorse. "I hope that this very _risqué_ pamphlet has pleased you," he wrote to Peter Gast on the 11th of August, 1888. "That would be for me a comfort by no means negligible. There are certain hours, above all, certain evenings, when I do not feel enough courage in myself for so many follies, for so much hardheartedness; I am in doubt over some passages. Perhaps I went too far (not in the matter, but in my manner of expressing the matter). Perhaps the note in which I speak of Wagner's family origins could be suppressed." A letter addressed about this time to Fräulein von Meysenbug gives food for thought. "I have given to men the most profound book," he writes; "one pays dearly for that. The price of being immortal is sometimes life! ... And always on my road that cretinism of Bayreuth! The old seducer Wagner, dead though he be, continues to draw away from me just those few men whom my influence might touch. But in Denmark--how absurd to think!--I have been celebrated this winter. Dr. Georges Brandes, whose mind is so full of vitality, has dared to talk about me before the University of Copenhagen. And with brilliant success! Always more than three hundred listeners! And a final ovation!--And something similar is being arranged in New York. I am the most _independent_ mind in Europe and the _only_ German writer--which is something!"