Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/376



1.
AFTER the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became all at once full of noise and laughter: and since the assembled guests all spoke simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged thereby, no longer remained silent, a little aversion and scorn for his visitors came over Zarathustra, although he rejoiced at their gladness. For it seemed to him a sign of convalescence. So he slipped out into the open air and spoke to his animals.

"Where has their distress now gone?" said he, and already did he himself feel relieved of his petty disgust- "with me, it seems that they have unlearned their cries of distress!

-Though, alas! not yet their crying." And Zarathustra stopped his ears, for just then did the you-A of the ass mix strangely with the noisy jubilation of those higher men.

"They are merry," he began again, "and who knows? perhaps at their host's expense; and if they have learned of me to laugh, still it is not my laughter they have learned.

But what matter about that! They are old people: they recover in their own way, they laugh in their own way; my ears have already endured worse and have not become peevish.

This day is a victory: he already yields, he flees, the spirit of gravity, my old arch-enemy! How well this day is about to end, which began so badly and gloomily!

And it is about to end. Already comes the evening: over the sea rides it here, the good rider! How it bobs, the blessed one, the home-returning one, in its purple saddles!