The last pope

Not long, however, after Zarathustra had freed himself from the magician, he again saw a person sitting beside the path which he followed, namely a tall, black man, with a haggard, pale countenance: THIS MAN grieved him…

Having just escaped the magician, Zarathustra sees a tall, black, pale man by the path and curses priests and sorcerers. He tries to slip past, but the man springs up and comes straight toward him.

“Whoever thou art, thou traveller,” said he, “help a strayed one, a seeker, an old man, who may here easily come to grief! The world here is strange to me, and remote; wild beasts also did I hear howling; and he who…

The old man asks for help and says he sought the saint in the forest, who has since died. He names himself the last pope, out of service and without a master. His heart sent him to seek Zarathustra.

Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and regarded it a long while with admiration. “Lo! thou venerable one,” said he then,…

Zarathustra admires the old man's long, blessing hand, which now holds the ungodly Zarathustra. He quotes his own saying and searches the pope's thoughts.

“He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most—: —Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who could rejoice at that!”— —“Thou servedst him to the last?” asked Zarathustra…

Zarathustra asks whether sympathy choked God when he saw man on the cross, and the pope looks away. Then the pope says his God was hidden, once harsh and revengeful, then old and pitiful, and finally suffocated.

“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.…

Zarathustra says gods die many kinds of death. He charges this one with indistinctness and with revenge on his own botched creations, which he calls a sin against good taste.

—“What do I hear!” said then the old pope, with intent ears; “O Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest, with such an unbelief! Some God in thee hath converted thee to thine ungodliness. Is it not thy piety…

The pope says some God converted Zarathustra to his ungodliness and that his honesty will lead him beyond good and evil. He senses blessing in Zarathustra's hands and asks to be his guest for a night.

“Amen! So shall it be!” said Zarathustra, with great astonishment; “up thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zarathustra. Gladly, forsooth, would I conduct thee thither myself, thou venerable one; for I love…

Zarathustra agrees and points the way to his cave, but the cry of distress calls him away. He says he cannot take the pope's melancholy from him, since the old God is dead.

For that old God liveth no more: he is indeed dead.”—

Zarathustra ends the exchange by saying the old God is dead.

It was late in the afternoon only when Zarathustra, after long useless searching and strolling about, again came home to his cave. When, however, he stood over against it, not more than twenty paces therefrom, the thing…

Returning home, Zarathustra hears the cry of distress again, this time from his own cave. He finds all the men he met that day sitting there, and greets them with courteous curiosity.

“Go not away!” said then the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow, “abide with us—otherwise the old gloomy affliction might again fall upon us. Now hath that old magician given us of his worst for our good,…

The shadow asks Zarathustra not to go. He says the magician's song, the pope's tears and the kings' pretended composure show the old melancholy still lurking. He recalls an after-dinner song he once made among Oriental maidens, then takes the magician's harp and begins to sing.

All on a sudden however, Zarathustra’s ear was frightened: for the cave which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once still as death;—his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and…

The cave falls silent and fills with incense. Zarathustra looks in and finds all the higher men kneeling and praying to the ass, and the ugliest man begins a litany.

At this place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer control himself; he himself cried out YE-A, louder even than the ass, and sprang into the midst of his maddened guests. “Whatever are you about, ye…

Zarathustra breaks into the litany with his own YE-A and pulls his guests up from the ground. The old pope and the shadow excuse their idolatry and blame the ugliest man for reawakening God.