And there was spoken unto me for the last time: “O Zarathustra, thy fruits are ripe, but thou art not ripe for thy fruits!

So must thou go again into solitude: for thou shalt yet become mellow.”—

And again was there a laughing, and it fled: then did it become still around me, as with a double stillness. I lay, however, on the ground, and the sweat flowed from my limbs.

—Now have ye heard all, and why I have to return into my solitude. Nothing have I kept hidden from you, my friends.

But even this have ye heard from me, WHO is still the most reserved of men—and will be so!

Ah, my friends! I should have something more to say unto you! I should have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a niggard?—

When, however, Zarathustra had spoken these words, the violence of his pain, and a sense of the nearness of his departure from his friends came over him, so that he wept aloud; and no one knew how to console him. In the night, however, he went away alone and left his friends.

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THIRD PART.

“Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation, and I look downward because I am exalted.