Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/297

 than before- also much nearer. "Hear you? Hear you, O Zarathustra?" called out the soothsayer, "the cry concerns you, it calls you: Come, come, come; it is time, it is the highest time!"-

Zarathustra was silent then, confused and staggered; at last he asked, like one who hesitates in himself: "And who is it that there calls me?"

"But you know it, certainly," answered the soothsayer warmly, "why do you conceal yourself? It is the higher man that cries for you!"

"The higher man?" cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken: "what wants he? What wants he? The higher man! What wants he here?"- and his skin covered with perspiration.

The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra's alarm, but listened and listened in the downward direction. When, however, it had been still there for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing trembling.

"O Zarathustra," he began, with sorrowful voice, "you do not stand there like one whose happiness makes him giddy: you will have to dance lest you tumble down!

But although you should dance before me, and leap all your side-leaps, no one may say to me: 'Behold, here dances the last joyous man!'

In vain would any one come to this height who sought him here: caves would he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones; but not lucky mines, nor treasure-chambers, nor new gold-veins of happiness.

Happiness- how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Blessed isles, and far away among forgotten seas?