He himself found I no longer when I found his cot—but two wolves found I therein, which howled on account of his death,—for all animals loved him. Then did I haste away.
Had I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains? Then did my heart determine that I should seek another, the most pious of all those who believe not in God—, my heart determined that I should seek Zarathustra!”
Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and regarded it a long while with admiration.
“Lo! thou venerable one,” said he then, “what a fine and long hand! That is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings. Now, however, doth it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra.
It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: ‘Who is ungodlier than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?’”—
Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began:
“He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most—:
—Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who could rejoice at that!”—
—“Thou servedst him to the last?” asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a deep silence, “thou knowest HOW he died? Is it true what they say, that sympathy choked him;
—That he saw how MAN hung on the cross, and could not endure it;—that his love to man became his hell, and at last his death?”—