Let us not misunderstand the real object of his meditations: this society, this discipline which he discerned in the past, were in reality the ideal forms of the Fatherland which he desired and for which he dared to hope. He saw on the one hand Latin Europe, weakened by utilitarianism and the softness of life, on the other Germany, rich in poets, in soldiers, in myths, in victories. She was suzerain of those races which were in process of decay. How would she exercise this suzerainty? Might not one augur from her triumph a new era, warlike and tragic, chivalrous and lyric? One could conceive it; and therefore one should hope for it, and this was enough to dictate one's duty. How glorious this Germany would be, with Bismarck as its chief, Moltke as its soldier, Wagner as its poet--its philosopher, too, existed, and was called Friedrich Nietzsche. This belief, though he expressed it nowhere, he surely had: for he had not a doubt as to his genius. He was elated, but did not let his dreams lead him astray: he imagined an ideal Fatherland, yet never lost from sight the Fatherland, human, too human, which actually existed. During October and the first days of November, alone with his own people in that Naumburg whose provincial virtues he did not love, he bore hardly with the vulgarity of the little people, of the functionaries with whom he mixed. Naumburg was a small Prussian town; Friedrich Nietzsche did not care for this robust and vulgar Prussia. Metz had capitulated; the finest army of France was taken captive: a delirium of conceit swept all Germany off its feet. Friedrich Nietzsche resisted the general tendency. The sentiment of triumph was a repose which his exacting soul might not know. On the contrary, he was disgusted and alarmed. "I fear," he wrote to his friend Gersdorff, "that we shall have to pay for our marvellous national victories at a price to which I, for my part, will never consent. In confidence--I am of opinion that modern Prussia is a Power highly dangerous to culture.... The enterprise is not easy, but we must be philosophers enough to keep our sang-froid in the midst of all this smoke, we must keep watch so that no robber may come and steal any part of what, in my opinion, is commensurable with nothing beside, not even the most heroic of military actions, not even our national exaltation."