Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Alexander Tille - 1896.djvu/427

 THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR 393

Of the convicts guilty of riches, who collect their profit out of all rubbish heaps, with cool eyes and voluptuous thoughts of that rabble that stinketh unto heaven,

Of that gilded-over, falsified mob, whose fathers were thieves or birds of carrion, or rag-gatherers with wives complaisant, voluptuous, and forgetful (for none of them hath a far way to go to become a whore).

Mob at the top, mob below ! What are to-day ' poor ' and ' rich ' ! this distinction have I unlearnt. Then I fled away, further, ever further, until I came unto these cows."

Thus spake the peaceful one and snuffed himself and perspired over his words, so that the cows won- dered again. But Zarathustra, all the time the man was speaking so bitterly, gazed with a smile into his face, and silently shook his head.

"Thou dost violence unto thyself, thou mount- preacher, in using such bitter words. For such bit- terness neither thy mouth nor eye was made.

Nor, methinketh, even thy stomach. Unto it all such anger and hatred and overflowing are repugnant. Thy stomach desireth gentler things. Thou art not a butcher.

Thou rather seemest unto me to be an eater of plants and roots. Perhaps thou grindest corn. But certainly thou art averse from the pleasures of the flesh and thou lovest honey."

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