Chronicle of Nietzsche's Life 371and asks him to watch over his friend. Overbeck immediately travels to
Turin and reports: "I see N. huddled up reading in the corner of a sofa
... the incomparable master of expression is incapable of conveying
even the delights of his merriment in anything but the most trivial
expressions or by dancing and jumping about in a comical manner."
Overbeck brings N. to Basel, where he is admitted to a clinic N.'s moth-
er comes to Basel and takes him to Jena's psychiatric clinic, where he
remains for one year. In May 1890, his mother takes N. home to
Naumburg. After his mother's death in 1897, N. is brought to Villa
Silberblick, in Weimar, by his sister.
August Horneffer visits N. in the final months of his life, and describes
him as follows: "Of course, we did not know him back in his healthy
days, but only saw him as an invalid in the final stage of paralysis.
Nonetheless, the minutes we spent in his presence were some of the
most valuable memories of our lives Although his eyes were vacant
and his features slack, and although the poor man lay there with crooked
limbs, more helpless than a child, a sense of magic radiated from his per-
sonality, and his appearance revealed a majesty that I would never expe-
rience again with any human being."
N. dies on August 25,1900.