Henri Albert coordinated the first major translations of Nietzsche into French, working on the project from 1894 and carrying out most of the translations himself. He was creative to the extent of forming a peculiarly French Nietzsche, a textual product that was successful in both ideological and commercial terms. Yet Henri had personal, even secret motivations behind his textual strategies, hidden beneath his long-standing historical influence. The purpose of this paper is to seek out those creative motivations, to explain why they were important in the context of the 1890s, and to suggest that their effects were ultimately negative.