It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who says: 'Who is ungodlier than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?'"-
Thus spoke 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 has now also lost him most-:
-Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who could rejoice at that!"-
-"You served him to the last?" asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a deep silence, "you know 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?"- -
The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a painful and gloomy expression.
"Let him go," said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still looking the old man straight in the eye.
"Let him go, he is gone. And though it honors you that you speak only in praise of this dead one, yet you know as well as I who he was, and that he went curious ways."
"To speak before three eyes," said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind of one eye), "in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra himself- and may well be so.
My love served him long years, my will followed all his will. A good servant, however, knows everything, and many a thing even which a master hides from himself.
He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. He did not come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith stands adultery.
Whoever extolls him as a God of love, does not think
