فصل 2

CHAPTER 2

FOUR WEEKS LATER, Breuer sat at his desk in his office at Bäckerstrasse 7. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and he was impatiently awaiting the arrival of Fräulein Lou Salomé.

It was unusual for him to have a hiatus during his workday, but in his eagerness to see her, he had quickly dispatched his previous three patients. All had straightforward ailments requiring little effort on his part.

The first two—men in their sixties—suffered from virtually identical conditions: severely labored breathing and a rasping, dry bronchial cough. For years Breuer had treated their chronic emphysema which, in cold, wet weather, became superimposed with acute bronchitis, resulting in severe pulmonary compromise. For both patients, he prescribed morphine for the cough (Dover’s powder, five grains three times a day), small doses of an expectorant (ipecac), steam inhalations, and mustard plasters to the thorax. Though some physicians scoffed at mustard plasters, Breuer believed in them and often prescribed them—especially this year, when half of Vienna seemed to be down with respiratory illness. The city had seen no sun for three weeks, only a remorseless freezing drizzle.

The third patient, a house servant in the home of Crown Prince Rudolf, was a feverish, pockmarked young man with a sore throat, so shy that Breuer had to be imperious in ordering him to undress for an examination. The diagnosis was follicular tonsillitis. Though adept at quickly excising tonsils with scissors and forceps, Breuer decided these tonsils were not ripe enough to remove. Instead, he prescribed a cold compress to the neck, a potassium chlorate gargle, and carbonized water spray inhalations. Since this was the patient’s third sore throat of the winter, Breuer also advised him to harden his skin and his resistance with daily cold baths.

Now, as he waited, he picked up the letter he had received three days ago from Fraulein Salomé. As boldly as in her previous note, she announced that she would arrive at his office today at four for a consultation. Breuer’s nostrils flared: “She tells me what time she shall arrive. She issues the edict. She bestows upon me the honor of—” But he quickly caught himself: “Don’t take yourself so seriously, Josef. What difference does it make? Even though Fraulein Salomé had no way of knowing, it happens that Wednesday afternoon is an excellent time to see her. In the long skein of things, what difference does it make?” “She tells me. . . ”Breuer reflected upon his tone of voice: it was precisely this inflated self-importance that he detested in his medical colleagues like Billroth and the elder Schnitzler, and in many of his illustrious patients like Brahms and Wittgenstein. The quality he most liked in his closer acquaintances, most of whom were also his patients, was their unpretentiousness. That was what drew him to Anton Bruckner. Maybe Anton would never be the composer Brahms was, but at least he didn’t worship the ground under his own feet.

Most of all, Breuer enjoyed the irreverent young sons of some of his acquaintances—the young Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler, Teddie Herzl, and that most improbable medical student, Arthur Schnitzler. He identified with them and, when other elders were out of hearing, delighted them with caustic jabs at the reigning class. For example, last week at the Polyklinik Ball, he had amused the group of young men crowding about him by pronouncing, “Yes, yes, it is true that the Viennese are a religious people—their god is named ‘Decorum.’ ” Breuer, ever the scientist, recalled the facility with which he had, in only a few minutes, switched from one mental state to another—from arrogance to unpretentiousness. What an interesting phenomenon! Could he replicate it?

Then and there he conducted a thought experiment. First he tried to slip into the Viennese persona with all the pomposity he had come to hate. By puffing himself up and silently muttering “How dare she!,” squinting his eyes and gritting his frontal cerebral lobes, he re-experienced the pique and indignation that envelop those who take themselves too seriously. Then exhaling and relaxing, he let it all slip away and stepped back into his own skin—into a state of mind which could laugh at itself, at its own ridiculous posturing.

He noted that each of these states of mind had its own emotional coloring: the inflated one had sharp corners—a nastiness and irritability—as well as a loftiness and loneliness. The other state, in contrast, felt round, soft, and accepting.

These were definite, identifiable emotions, Breuer thought, but they were also modest emotions. What about more powerful emotions and the states of mind that brew them? Might there be a way to control those stronger emotions? Might that not lead to an effective psychological therapy?

He considered his own experience. His most labile states of mind involved women. There were times—today, ensconced in the fortress of his consulting room, was one of them—when he felt strong and safe. At such times, he saw women as they really were: struggling, aspiring creatures dealing with the endless pressing problems of everyday life; and he saw the reality of their breasts: clusters of mammary cells floating in lipoid pools. He knew about their leakages, dysmenorrheic problems, sciatica, and various irregular protrusions—prolapsed bladders and uteruses, and bulging blue hemorrhoids and varicosities.

But then there were other times—times of enchantment, of being captured by women who were larger than life, their breasts swelling into powerful, magical globes—when he was overcome by an extraordinary craving to merge with their bodies, to suckle at their nipples, to slip into their warmth and wetness. This state of mind could be overwhelming, could overturn an entire life—and had, in his work with Bertha, almost cost him everything he held dear.

It was all a matter of perspective, of switching frames of mind. If he could teach patients to do that at will, he might indeed become what Fraulein Salomé sought—a doctor for despair.

His reverie was interrupted by the sound of the door opening and closing in his outer office. Breuer waited a moment or two, so as not to appear overanxious, and then stepped into his waiting room to greet Lou Salomé. She was wet, the Viennese drizzle having become a downpour—but before he could help her out of her dripping outer coat, she was shrugging it off by herself and handing it to his nurse and receptionist, Frau Becker.

After ushering Fraulein Salomé into his office and motioning her toward a heavy black leather-upholstered chair, Breuer sat down in the chair next to her. He couldn’t help remarking, “I see you prefer to do things for yourself. Doesn’t that deprive men of the pleasure of serving you?” “We both know that some of the services men provide are not necessarily good for women’s health!”

“Your future husband will need extensive retraining. The habits of a lifetime are not easily extinguished.”

“Marriage? No, not for me! I have told you. Oh, perhaps a part-time marriage—that might suit me, but nothing more binding.”

Looking at his bold, beautiful visitor, Breuer could see much appeal in the idea of a part-time marriage. It was hard to keep in mind that she was only half his age. She wore a simple, long black dress buttoned high up to her neck, and a fur pelt with tiny fox face and feet was wrapped around her shoulders. Strange, Breuer thought, in cold Venice she discards her fur, yet clings to it in my overheated office. Still, it was time to get down to business.

“Now, Fräulein,” he said, “let us take up the matter of your friend’s illness.”

“Despair—not illness. I have several recommendations. May I share them with you?”

Is there no limit to her presumption? he wondered indignantly. She speaks as though she were my confrère—the head of a clinic, a physician with thirty years of experience—not an inexperienced schoolgirl.

Calm down, Josef! he admonished himself. She is very young, she doesn’t worship the Viennese god, Decorum. Besides, she knows this Professor Nietzsche better than I do. She’s remarkably intelligent and may have something important to say. God knows I have no idea about curing despair: I can’t cure my own.

He answered calmly, “Indeed, Fraulein. Please proceed.”

“My brother, Jenia, whom I saw this morning, mentioned that you used mesmerism to help Anna O. recall the original psychological source of each of her symptoms. I remember your telling me in Venice that this uncovering of the origin of each symptom somehow dissolved it. The how of this ‘somehow’ intrigues me. Some day when we have more time, I hope that you will enlighten me about the precise mechanism through which arriving at the knowledge of the source eliminates the symptom.” Breuer shook his head and waved his hands, palms toward Lou Salomé. “It’s an empirical observation. Even had we all the time in the world to talk, I’m afraid I could not provide you with the precision you seek. But your recommendations, Fräulein?”

“My first recommendation is: do not attempt this mesmerism method with Nietzsche. It would not be successful with him! His mind, his intellect, is a miracle—one of the wonders of the world, as you will see for yourself. But he is, to borrow one of his favorite phrases, only human, all too human, and he has his own blind spots.” Lou Salomé now removed her fur, rose slowly, and walked across the office to place it on Breuer’s sofa. She glanced for a moment at the framed diplomas hanging on the wall, adjusted one that hung slightly askew, and then sat down again and crossed her legs before going on.

“Nietzsche is extraordinarily sensitive to issues of power. He would refuse to engage in any process that he perceives as surrendering his power to another. He is attracted in his philosophy to the pre-Socratic Greeks, especially to their concept of Agonis—the belief that one develops one’s natural gifts only through contest—and he is deeply distrustful of the motives of anyone who forgoes contest and claims to be altruistic. His mentor in these matters was Schopenhauer. No one desires, he believes, to help another: instead, people wish only to dominate and increase their own power. The few times when he surrendered his power to another, he’s ended up feeling devastated and enraged. It happened with Richard Wagner. I believe it is happening now with me.” “What do you mean, it’s happening with you? Is it true that you are, in some way, personally responsible for Professor Nietzsche’s great despair?”

“He believes I am. That is why my second recommendation is: do not ally yourself with me. You look puzzled—for you to understand, I must tell you everything about my relationship to Nietzsche. I shall omit nothing and answer your every question with candor. This will not be easy. I place myself in your hands, but my words must remain our secret.” “Of course, you may count on that, Fräulein,” he replied, marveling at her directness, at how refreshing it was to converse with someone so open.

“Well, then. . . I first met Nietzsche approximately eight months ago, in April.”

Frau Becker knocked and entered with coffee. If she was surprised to see Breuer seated next to Lou Salomé rather than in his customary place behind the desk, she gave no evidence of it. Without a word, she deposited a tray containing china, spoons, and a gleaming silver pot of coffee and quickly left. Breuer poured the coffee as Lou Salomé continued.

“I left Russia last year because of my health—a respiratory condition which is now much improved. I first lived in Zurich and studied theology with Biederman and also worked with the poet Gottfried Kinkel—I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m an aspiring poet. When my mother and I moved to Rome early this year, Kinkel provided a letter of introduction to Malwida von Meysenburg. You know her—she wrote Memoirs of an Idealist.” Breuer nodded. He was familiar with Malwida von Meysenbug’s work, especially with her crusades for women’s rights, radical political reform, and diverse transformations in the educational process. He was less comfortable with her recent antimaterialistic tracts, which he thought based on pseudoscientific claims.

Lou Salomé continued, “So I went to Malwida’s literary salon and there met a charming and brilliant philosopher, Paul Rée, with whom I became quite friendly. Herr Rée had attended Nietzsche’s classes at Basel many years before, and thereafter the two had maintained a close friendship. I could see that Herr Rée admired Nietzsche over all other men. Soon he developed the notion that, if he and I were friends, then Nietzsche and I must also become friends. Paul—Herr Rée—but, Doctor”—she flushed for only an instant, but long enough for Breuer to notice, and for her to notice him noticing—“allow me to call him Paul, since that is how I address him, and today we have no time for social niceties. I’m very close to Paul, though I’ll never immolate myself in marriage to him or to anyone!

“But,” she went on impatiently, “I have spent enough time explaining a brief involuntary flushing of my face. Aren’t we the only animals that blush?”

At a loss for words, Breuer could muster only a nod. For a while, surrounded by his medical paraphernalia, he had felt more powerful than during their last talk. But now, exposed to the power of her charm, he felt his strength slipping away. Her comment about her blush was remarkable: never in his life had he heard a woman, or anyone else for that matter, speak of social intercourse with such directness. And she was only twenty-one years old!

“Paul was convinced that Nietzsche and I would become fast friends,” Lou Salomé continued, “that we were perfect for one another. He wanted me to become Nietzsche’s student, protégée, and counterfoil. He wanted Nietzsche to be my teacher, my secular priest.” They were interrupted by a light knock on the door. Breuer rose to open it, and Frau Becker whispered loudly that a new patient had entered. Breuer sat down again and reassured Lou Salomé that they had ample time, for unannounced patients expect long delays, and urged her to go on.

“Well,” she continued, “Paul arranged a meeting at Saint Peter’s Basilica, the most unlikely place for the rendezvous of our unholy Trinity—the name we later adopted for ourselves, though Nietzsche often referred to it as a ‘Pythagorean relationship.’ ” Breuer caught himself gazing at his visitor’s bosom rather than at her face. How long, he wondered, have I been doing that? Has she noticed? Have other women noticed me doing that? In his imagination, he grabbed a broom and swept away all sexual thoughts. He concentrated harder on her eyes and her words.

“I was immediately attracted to Nietzsche. He’s not an imposing man physically—medium height, with a gentle voice and unblinking eyes that look inward rather than out, as if he were protecting some inner treasure. I didn’t know then that he is three-quarters blind. Still, there was something extraordinarily compelling about him. The first words he spoke to me were: ‘From what stars have we dropped down to each other here?’ “Then the three of us started to talk. And what talk! For a time, it appeared that Paul’s hopes for a friendship or mentorship between Nietzsche and me would be realized. Intellectually, we were a perfect fit. We folded into each other’s minds—he said we had twin brother-sister brains. Ah, he read aloud the jewels of his last book, he set my poems to music, he told me what he was going to offer the world during the next ten years—he believed that his health would grant him no more than a decade.

“Soon Paul, Nietzsche, and I decided we should live together in a ménage à trois. We began to make plans to spend this winter in Vienna or possibly Paris.”

A ménage à trois! Breuer cleared his throat and shifted uneasily in his chair. He saw her smiling at his discomfiture. Is there nothing she misses? What a diagnostician this woman would make! Has she ever considered a career in medicine? Might she, as my student? My protégée? My colleague, working by my side in the consulting room, the laboratory? This fantasy had power, real power—but her words shook Breuer out of it.

“Yes, I know the world doesn’t smile upon two men and a woman living chastely together.” She accented “chastely” superbly—hard enough to set matters right, yet soft enough to avoid rebuke. “But we are free-thinking idealists who reject socially imposed restrictions. We believe in our capability to create our own moral structure.” As Breuer did not respond, his visitor appeared, for the first time, uncertain how to proceed.

“Shall I continue? Do we have time? Am I offending you?”

“Continue, please, gnädiges Fraulein. First, I have set aside the time for you.” He reached across his desk, held up his calender, and pointed to the large L.S. scrawled across Wednesday, 22 November 1882. “You see I have nothing else scheduled this afternoon. And secondly, you are not offending me. On the contrary, I admire your candor, your forthrightness. Would that all friends spoke so honestly! Life would be richer and more genuine.” Accepting his praise without comment, Lou Salomé poured herself more coffee and continued with her story. “First, I should make clear that my relationship with Nietzsche, though intense, was brief. We met only four times, and were almost always chaperoned by my mother, by Paul’s mother, or by Nietzsche’s sister. In fact, Nietzsche and I were seldom alone for walks or conversations.

“The intellectual honeymoon of our unholy Trinity was also brief. Fissures appeared. Then romantic and lustful feelings. Perhaps they were present from the very beginning. Perhaps I should take responsibility for failing to recognize them.” She shook herself as if to doff that responsibility, and went on to recount a crucial sequence of events.

“Toward the end of our first meeting, Nietzsche grew concerned about my plan for a chaste ménage à trois, thinking the world not ready for it, and asked me to keep our plan secret. He was especially concerned about his family: under no circumstances must his mother or his sister learn about us. Such conventionality! I was surprised and disappointed, and wondered if I’d been misled by his courageous language and his free-thinking proclamations.

“Shortly afterward, Nietzsche arrived at an even stronger position—that such a living arrangement would be socially dangerous for me, perhaps even ruinous. And, in order to protect me, he said he had decided to propose marriage, and asked Paul to convey his offer to me. Can you imagine the position that put Paul in? But Paul, out of loyalty to his friend—dutifully, though a bit phlegmatically—told me of Nietzsche’s proposal.” “Did it surprise you?” Breuer asked.

“Very much—especially coming after our very first visit. It also unsettled me. Nietzsche is a great man and has a gentleness, a power, an extraordinary presence; I don’t deny, Doctor Breuer, that I was strongly attracted to him—but not romantically. Perhaps he sensed my attraction to him and did not believe my assertion that marriage was as far from my mind as romance.” A sudden gust of wind rattling the windows distracted Breuer for a moment. He suddenly felt stiff in neck and shoulders. He had been listening so intently that for several minutes he had not moved a muscle. Occasionally patients had talked to him of personal issues, but never like this. Never face to face, never so unblinkingly. Bertha had revealed a great deal, but always in an “absent” state of mind. Lou Salomé was “present” and, even when describing remote events, created such moments of intimacy that Breuer felt they were lovers talking. He had no trouble understanding why Nietzsche would propose marriage to her after only a single meeting.

“And then, Fräulein?”

“Then I resolved to be more frank when we next met. But it turned out to be unnecessary. Nietzsche quickly realized that he was as frightened by the prospect of marriage as I was repelled by it. When I next saw him, two weeks later in Orta, his first words to me were that I must disregard his proposal. He urged me instead to join him in pursuit of the ideal relationship—passionate, chaste, intellectual, and nonmarital.

“The three of us reconciled. Nietzsche was in such high spirits about our ménage à trois that he insisted, one afternoon in Lucerne, that we pose for this—the only picture of our unholy Trinity.”

In the photograph she handed Breuer, two men were standing before a cart; she was kneeling inside it, brandishing a small whip. “The man in the front, with the mustache, gazing upward—that’s Nietzsche,” she said warmly. “The other one is Paul.”

Breuer inspected the photograph carefully. It disturbed him to see these two men—pathetic, shackled giants—harnessed by this beautiful young woman and her tiny whip.

“What do you think of my stable, Doctor Breuer?”

For the first time, one of her gay comments missed its mark, and Breuer was reminded suddenly that she was only a twenty-one-year-old girl. He felt uncomfortable—he did not like to see seams in this polished creature. His heart went out to the two men in bondage—his brothers. Surely he could have been one of them.

His visitor must have sensed her misstep, Breuer thought, noticing how she rushed to continue her narrative.

“We met twice more, in Tautenberg, about three months ago, with Nietzsche’s sister and then in Leipzig with Paul’s mother. But Nietzsche wrote me continually. Here’s a letter, in which he responded to my telling him how moved I was by his book Dawn.” Breuer quickly read the short letter she handed him.

My dear Lou,

I, too, have dawns about me, and not painted ones! Something I no longer believed possible, to find a friend for my ultimate happiness and suffering, now seems to me possible—the golden possibility on the horizon of my whole future life. I am moved whenever I so much as think of the bold and rich soul of my dear Lou.

F.N.

Breuer kept silent. Now he felt an even greater bond of empathy with Nietzsche. To find dawns and golden possibilities, to love a rich, bold soul: everyone needs that, he thought, at least once in a lifetime.

“During this same time,” Lou continued, “Paul began to write equally ardent letters. And despite my best mediating efforts, the tension within our Trinity increased alarmingly. The friendship between Paul and Nietzsche was disintegrating quickly. Ultimately they began to disparage each other in their letters to me.” “But surely,” Breuer interjected, “this comes as no surprise to you? Two ardent men in an intimate relation with the same woman?”

“Perhaps I was naïve. I believed that we three could share a life of the mind, that we could do serious philosophical work together.”

Apparently unsettled by Breuer’s question, she rose, stretched slightly, and sauntered to the window, stopping on the way to inspect some of the objects on his desk—a Renaissance bronze mortar and pestle, a small Egyptian funerary figure, an intricate wooden model of the semicircular canals of the inner ear.

“Perhaps I’m obstinate,” she said, looking out the window, “but I am still not convinced that our ménage à trois was impossible! It might have worked had it not been for the interference of Nietzsche’s odious sister. Nietzsche invited me to spend the summer with him and Elisabeth in Tautenberg, a small village in Thüringen. She and I met at Bayreuth, where we met Wagner and attended a performance of Parsifal. Then together we journeyed to Tautenberg.” “Why do you call her odious, Fräulein?”

“Elisabeth is a divisive, mean-spirited, dishonest, anti-Semitic goose. When I made the mistake of telling her Paul is Jewish, she took pains to make this known to Wagner’s entire circle in order to ensure that Paul would never be welcome in Bayreuth.” Breuer put down his coffee cup. While at first Lou Salomé had lulled him into the sweet safe realm of love, art, and philosophy, now her words jarred him back to reality, to the ugly world of anti-Semitism. That very morning he had read in the Neue Freie Presse a story about fraternities of youths roaming the university, entering the classrooms, shouting “Juden hinaus!” (Jews get out) and forcing all Jews out of the lecture halls—physically pulling anyone who resisted.

“Fräulein, I, too, am Jewish, and must inquire whether Professor Nietzsche shares his sister’s anti-Jewish views?”

“I know you’re Jewish. Jenia told me. It’s important that you know Nietzsche cares only about truth. He hates the lie of prejudice—all prejudice. He hates his sister’s anti-Semitism. He is appalled and disgusted that Bernard Förster, one of Germany’s most outspoken and virulent anti-Semites, often visits her. His sister, Elisabeth. . . ” Now her words came faster, the pitch of her voice rising an octave. Breuer could tell that she knew she was straying from her prepared narrative, but could not stop herself.

“Elisabeth, Doctor Breuer, is a horror. She called me a prostitute. She lied to Nietzsche and told him that I showed everyone that photo and bragged about how he loves the taste of my whip. She always lies! She is a dangerous woman. Some day, mark my words, she will do Nietzsche great damage!” Still standing, she held tightly to the back of a chair as she spoke these words. Then, sitting, she continued more calmly, “As you may imagine, my three weeks at Tautenberg with Nietzsche and Elisabeth were complex. My time alone with him was sublime. Wonderful walks and deep conversations about everything—sometimes his health permitted him to talk ten hours a day! I wonder if ever before there has been such philosophical openness between two persons. We talked about the relativity of good and evil, about the necessity to free oneself from public morality in order to live morally, about a freethinker’s religion. Nietzsche’s words seemed true: we had sibling brains—we could say so much to one another with half-words, half-sentences, mere gestures. Yet this paradise was spoiled, because all the while we were under the eye of his serpent sister—I could see her listening, always misunderstanding, scheming.” “Tell me, why would Elisabeth slander you?”

“Because she’s fighting for her life. She is a small-minded, spiritually impoverished woman. She cannot afford to lose her brother to another woman. She realizes Nietzsche is, and will forever be, her sole source of significance.”

She glanced at her watch and then at the closed door.

“I’m concerned about the time, so I’ll tell you the rest quickly. Just last month, despite Elisabeth’s objections, Paul, Nietzsche, and I spent three weeks in Leipzig with Paul’s mother, where we once again had serious philosophical discussions, particularly about the development of religious belief. We parted only two weeks ago, with Nietzsche still believing we three would spend the spring living together in Paris. But it will never be, I know that now. His sister succeeded in poisoning his mind against me, and recently he began sending letters full of despair and hatred for both Paul and me.” “And now, today, Fraulein Salomé, where do things stand?”

“Everything has deteriorated. Paul and Nietzsche have become enemies. Paul grows angry every time he reads Nietzsche’s letters to me, every time he hears of any tender feelings I have for Nietzsche.”

“Paul reads your letters?”

“Yes, why not? Our friendship has grown deeper. I suspect I will always be close to him. We have no secrets from one another: we even read one another’s diaries. Paul has been entreating me to break off with Nietzsche. Finally I acquiesced and wrote Nietzsche that though I shall always treasure our friendship, our ménage à trois was no longer possible. I told him that there was too much pain, too much destructive influence—from his sister, from his mother, from the quarrels between him and Paul.” “And his response?”

“Wild! Frightening! He writes crazed letters, sometimes insulting 01 threatening, sometimes deeply despairing. Here, look at these passages I’ve received just this past week!”

She held out two letters whose appearance even showed agitation: the uneven script, the many words abbreviated or underlined several times. Breuer squinted at the paragraphs she had circled, but then, unable to make out more than a few words, handed them back to her.

“I forgot,” she said, “how difficult it is to read his script. Let me decipher this one addressed to both Paul and me: ‘Don’t let my outbreaks of megalomania or wounded vanity bother you too much—and if I should one day happen to take my own life in some fit of passion, there wouldn’t be anything in that to worry about overmuch. What are my fantasies to you! . . . I came to this reasonable view of the situation after I had taken—from despair—an enormous dose of opium——’ ” She broke off. “That’s enough to give you an idea of his despair. I’ve been staying at Paul’s family estate in Bavaria for several weeks now, so all my mail comes there. Paul has been destroying his most vitriolic letters in order to spare me pain, but this one to me alone slipped through: ‘If I banish you from me now, it is a frightful censure of your whole being. . . . You have caused damage, you have done harm—and not only to me but to all the people who have loved me: this sword hangs over you.’ ” She looked up at Breuer. “Now, Doctor, do you see why I so strongly recommend that you don’t ally yourself with me in any way?”

Breuer drew deep upon his cigar. Though intrigued by Lou Salomé and absorbed in the melodrama she was unfolding, he was troubled. Was it wise to have agreed to enter into it? What a jungle! What primitive and powerful relationships: the unholy Trinity, Nietzsche’s ruptured friendship with Paul, the powerful connection between Nietzsche and his sister. And the viciousness between her and Lou Salomé: I must take care, he told himself, to stay out of the way of those thunderbolts. Most explosive of all, of course, is Nietzsche’s desperate love, now turned to hatred, for Lou Salomé. But it was too late to turn back. He had committed himself and in Venice had blithely told her, “I have never refused to treat the sick.” He turned back to Lou Salomé. “These letters help me understand your alarm, Fräulein Salomé. I share your concern about your friend: his stability seems precarious, and suicide a real possibility. But since you now have little influence over Professor Nietzsche, how can you persuade him to visit me?” “Yes, that is a problem—one I have been considering at length. Even my name is poison to him now, and I shall have to work indirectly. That means, of course, that he must never, never know of my having arranged a meeting with you. You must never tell him! But now that I know you are willing to meet with him——” She put down her cup and looked so intently at Breuer that he had to reply quickly: “Of course, Fraulein. As I said to you in Venice, ‘I have never refused to treat the sick.’ ”

Upon hearing these words, Lou Salomé broke into a broad smile. Ah, she had been under more tension than he had imagined.

“With that assurance, Doctor Breuer, I shall begin our campaign to place Nietzsche in your office without his knowing my part in the matter. His behavior is now so disturbed that I’m certain all his friends are alarmed and would welcome any sensible plan to help. On my way back to Berlin tomorrow, I’ll stop in Basel to propose our plan to Franz Overbeck, Nietzsche’s lifelong friend. Your reputation as a diagnostician will help us. I believe Professor Overbeck can persuade Nietzsche to consult with you about his medical condition. If I am successful, you will hear from me by letter.” In speedy succession, she put Nietzsche’s letters back into her purse, rose, flounced her long ruffled skirt, gathered up her fox stole from the couch, and reached out to clasp Breuer’s hand. “And now, my dear Doctor Breuer——”

As she placed her other hand on his, Breuer’s pulse quickened. Don’t be an old fool, he thought, but gave himself up to the warmth of her hand. He wanted to tell her how he loved her touching him. Perhaps she knew, for she kept his hand in hers as she spoke.

“I hope we stay in frequent contact about this matter. Not only because of my deep feelings about Nietzsche and my fear that I am, unwittingly, responsible for some of his distress. There’s something else. I hope, too, you and I will become friends. I have many faults, as you’ve seen: I am impulsive, I shock you, I am unconventional. But I also have strengths. I have an excellent eye for nobility of spirit in a man. And when I have found such a man I prefer not to lose him. So we shall write?” She dropped his hand, strode to the door, then stopped abruptly. She reached into her bag to draw out two small volumes.

“Oh, Doctor Breuer, I almost forgot. I think you should have Nietzsche’s last two books. They’ll give you insight into his mind. But he must not know you have seen them. That would arouse his suspicion, since so few of these books have sold.”

Again, she touched Breuer’s arm. “And one more point. Despite having so few readers now, Nietzsche is convinced that fame will come. He told me once that the day after tomorrow belongs to him. So don’t tell anyone you’re helping him. Don’t use his name to anyone. If you do and he finds out, he’d consider it a great betrayal. Your patient—Anna O.—that’s not her real name, is it? You use a pseudonym?” Breuer nodded.

“Then I’d advise you to do the same for Nietzsche. Auf Wiedersehen, Doctor Breuer,” and she held out her hand.

“Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein,” said Breuer, as he bowed and pressed it to his lips.

Shutting the door behind her, he glanced at the two slim, paper-covered volumes and noted their strange titles—Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science) and Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human)—before putting them down on his desk. He went to the window to catch one last glimpse of Lou Salomé. She raised her umbrella, walked quickly down his front steps, and, without looking back, entered a waiting fiacre.