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, “what a fine and long hand! That is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings. Now, however, doth it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra.
It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: ‘Who is ungodlier than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?’”—
Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began:
What the critics said
Ludovici explains the last pope's story as Nietzsche's history of Judaism and Christianity: the jealous, revengeful God of a strong warlike race degenerates with his people into a soft, pitiful God of love who sacrifices his Son for us, and this process ends in his being suffocated by his own pity.