ately,--

--In the end, however, grasping out for ITS dominion with strong, green
branches, asking weighty questions of the wind, the storm, and whatever
is at home on high places;

--Answering more weightily, a commander, a victor! Oh! who should not
ascend high mountains to behold such growths?

At thy tree, O Zarathustra, the gloomy and ill-constituted also refresh
themselves; at thy look even the wavering become steady and heal their
hearts.

And verily, towards thy mountain and thy tree do many eyes turn to-day;
a great longing hath arisen, and many have learned to ask: 'Who is
Zarathustra?'

And those into whose ears thou hast at any time dripped thy song and thy
honey: all the hidden ones, the lone-dwellers and the twain-dwellers,
have simultaneously said to their hearts:

'Doth Zarathustra still live? It is no longer worth while to live,
everything is indifferent, everything is useless: or else--we must live
with Zarathustra!'

'Why doth he not come who hath so long announced himself?' thus do many
people ask; 'hath solitude swallowed him up? Or should we perhaps go to
him?'

Now doth it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and
breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold
its dead. Everywhere one seeth resurrected ones.

Now do the waves rise and rise around thy mountain, O Zarathustra. And
however high be thy height, many of them must rise up to thee: thy boat
shall not rest much longer on dry ground.

And that we despairing ones have now come into thy cave, and already no
longer despair:--it is but a prognostic and a presage that better ones
are on the way to thee,--

--For they themselves are on the way to thee, the last remnant of
God among men--that is to say, all the men of great longing, of great
loathing, of great satiety,

--All who do not want to live unless they learn again to HOPE--unless
they learn from thee, O Zarathustra, the GREAT hope!"

Thus spake the king on the right, and seized the hand of Zarathustra in
order to kiss it; but Zarathustra checked his veneration, and stepped
back frightened, fleeing as it were, silently and suddenly into the far
distance. After a little while, however, he was again at home with his
guests, looked at them with clear scrutinising eyes, and said:

"My guests, ye higher men, I will speak plain language and plainly with
you. It is not for YOU that I have waited here in these mountains."

("'Plain language a