On this occasion, when the soothsayer was longing for wine, it happened that the king on the left, the silent one, also found expression for once. “WE took care,” said he, “about wine, I, along with my brother the king on the right: we have enough of wine,—a whole ass-load of it. So there is nothing lacking but bread.”
“Bread,” replied Zarathustra, laughing when he spake, “it is precisely bread that anchorites have not. But man doth not live by bread alone, but also by the flesh of good lambs, of which I have two:
—THESE shall we slaughter quickly, and cook spicily with sage: it is so that I like them. And there is also no lack of roots and fruits, good enough even for the fastidious and dainty,—nor of nuts and other riddles for cracking.
Thus will we have a good repast in a little while. But whoever wish to eat with us must also give a hand to the work, even the kings. For with Zarathustra even a king may be a cook.”
What the critics said
Mencken describes Zarathustra as a remote sage attended by a snake and an eagle whose discourses recall the biblical rhapsodists, and argues that toward the end Nietzsche indulges in blasphemy, with a parody of the last supper, the disciples' worship of a jackass, and Wagner and other enemies appearing thinly veiled as buffoons.