orror on one countenance?
He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the serpent crawled into his
throat--there had it bitten itself fast.

My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:--in vain! I failed to pull
the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: "Bite! Bite!

Its head off! Bite!"--so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my
loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of
me.--

Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever
of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye
enigma-enjoyers!

Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the
vision of the lonesomest one!

For it was a vision and a foresight:--WHAT did I then behold in parable?
And WHO is it that must come some day?

WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? WHO is
the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?

--The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a
strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent--: and sprang
up.--

No longer shepherd, no longer man--a transfigured being, a
light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE
laughed!

O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,--and now
gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.

My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure
to live! And how could I endure to die at present!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.

XLVII. INVOLUNTARY BLISS.

With such enigmas and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra sail o'er
the sea. When, however, he was four day-journeys from the Happy
Isles and from his friends, then had he surmounted all his pain--:
triumphantly and with firm foot did he again accept his fate. And then
talked Zarathustra in this wise to his exulting conscience:

Alone am I again, and like to be so, alone with the pure heaven, and the
open sea; and again is the afternoon around me.

On an afternoon did I find my friends for the first time; on an
afternoon, also, did I find them a second time:--at the hour when all
light becometh stiller.

For whatever happiness is still on its way 'twixt heaven and earth, now
seeketh for lodging a luminous soul: WITH HAPPINESS hath all light now
become stiller.

O afternoon of my life! Once did my happiness also descend to the valley
that it might seek a lodging: then did it find those op