, still
looking the old man straight in the eye.

"Let him go, he is gone. And though it honoureth thee that thou speakest
only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest as well as I WHO he
was, and that he went curious ways."

"To speak before three eyes," said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind
of one eye), "in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra
himself--and may well be so.

My love served him long years, my will followed all his will. A good
servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a thing even which a
master hideth from himself.

He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Verily, he did not come by his
son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith standeth
adultery.

Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of
love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one
loveth irrespective of reward and requital.

When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and
revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites.

At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful,
more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old
grandmother.

There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account
of his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of
his all-too-great pity."--

"Thou old pope," said here Zarathustra interposing, "hast thou seen THAT
with thine eyes? It could well have happened in that way: in that way,
AND also otherwise. When Gods die they always die many kinds of death.

Well! At all events, one way or other--he is gone! He was counter to the
taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say
against him.

I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly. But
he--thou knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was something of
thy type in him, the priest-type--he was equivocal.

He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because
we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly?

And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him
badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them?

Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned
thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however,
because they turned out badly--that was a sin against GOOD TASTE.

There is also good taste in piety: THIS