Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/327

 past green meadows, though also sometimes over wild stony couches where once perhaps an impatient brook had made its bed, then he turned all at once warmer and heartier again.

"What has happened to me?" he asked himself, "something warm and living quickens me; it must be in the neighborhood.

Already am I less alone; unconscious companions and brothers rove around me; their warm breath touches my soul."

When, however, he spied about and sought for the comforters of his lonesomeness, behold, there were kine there standing together on an eminence, whose proximity and smell had warmed his heart. The kine, however, seemed to listen eagerly to a speaker, and took no heed of him who approached. When, however, Zarathustra was quite near to them, then did he hear plainly that a human voice spoke in the midst of the kine, and apparently all of them had turned their heads towards the speaker.

Then ran Zarathustra up speedily and drove the animals aside; for he feared that some one had here met with harm, which the pity of the kine would hardly be able to relieve. But in this he was deceived; for behold, there sat a man on the ground who seemed to be persuading the animals to have no fear of him, a peaceable man and Preacher-on-the-Mount, out of whose eyes kindness itself preached. "What do you seek here?" called out Zarathustra in astonishment.

"What do I here seek?" answered he: "the same that you seek, you mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon earth.

To that end, however, I would rather learn of these kine. For I tell you that I have already talked half a morning to